That's not right either. The economy, and people's place in the whole pecking order, isn't under anyone's control, really. People who are on the losing end wan

That's not right either. The economy, and people's place in the whole pecking order, isn't under anyone's control, really. People who are on the losing end want to change the system; sometimes their pattern-recognition sees conspiracies, or lets them believe in stories about how the system is oppressing them, but their responses don't necessarily lead to a better system. That doesn't mean that they were wrong, that the system couldn't be better. Just that the stories that they used to make sense of the world didn't give them good tools to improve things. Most economic and social stories are like this - they become viral by being simple enough for a lot of people to understand, but fundamentally the whole system has feedback loops and second and third order effects dominate when people try to change the system. There aren't any simple solutions, but simple solutions helped by simple stories are getting a lot of traction these days, on both left and right ends of the political spectrum. Don't underestimate the power of self-delusion in justifying one's own position, if you think you're doing well. It's easy to start thinking that poor people deserve to be poor as a coping mechanism for the guilt you might otherwise feel.