I can't believe I missed the awkward framing of that conversation the first time!

Yes, I think this is precursor Girl Boss framing. Wouldn't it be great if (white) women could get to the top of the economic hierarchy? Post Sheryl Sandberg, I think everyone sees the flaws there.

As for Samantha's kinks, I have to disagree. She talks a big game, and she has a lot of sex, but when it comes to actual non-vanilla sex, she either runs away from it, or the show lets her off the hook. Two examples are when she abandons a guy tied up in his closet, and another is when she agrees to have a threesome with two gay men, but they end up being more interested in each other. The show has lots of other examples of anti-kink (like Carrie's politician's boyfriends interest in watersports was treated with ridicule, even though he was respectful about expressing his interest). Samantha is great about talking about sexual liberation (to the point of tediousness, honestly), but her behavior trends strongly vanilla.

Back to classism, the episode with the gay threesome, Samantha proudly declares that the year is 2000 and labels are dead; all that matters is that you are good in bed. Sounds good, yet Samantha almost exclusively sleeps with upperclass men with the exceptions (firemen, farmers) being explicit exceptions. So labels don't matter, but income definitely does.

I wouldn't say anything on the show wholly escapes examination, but there is definitely subtext.

Like I said, I've got to plow through the rest of the mess with Big and Aidan and get to the movies so I can be caught up, though honestly I think I might be willing to take the zeitgeist's opinion on the films at its word.