Yeah, that was some ambiguous wording on my part. To elaborate: Americans are told from birth that capitalism is this wonderful system that gives us freedom of choice, and that the free market causes the best products and the most well-run companies to prosper. This belief system is reflected in prosperity gospel, which is the same ideology but coated in a layer of religion. We americans are told that if we just work hard enough, we can be rich too.

But that's not how capitalism really works. The division of people into working and ruling classes, and the abstraction of value means that the more money you have, the more you can extract from the workers who actually produce the value. This reality is largely ignored, or suppressed, or denied.

So you have these massive numbers of people who were told capitalism will let them be "successful", ie financially secure and...it doesn't. There's only one grocery store in town so you buy what's available. There's no bus system so you buy a car and be in debt however long it takes. The so-called "free market" is dominated by actors who can afford to purchase their competition.

Capitalism works as intended by the elite who do more to uphold it than anyone else: they get more and more money. The nominal goal of prosperity and growth for all is never realized, and this is framed as individual failures rather than the effect of the system itself. "Just work harder and your boss will give you a raise!"