I’ve lived on the streets, in a car, in a house with 10 people so we could cover rent, in slums and have crawled up to solidly middle class. I think it used to be easier to do that than it is now, like every year it gets more stratified with more slipping below average (meaning the mean) but also harder to dig out. Not impossible, but it was hard enough as person of able body and mind back then - I can’t imagine how hard now.
At work in my department only one of us has never been very poor, I do think there is some social mobility but for each of us there must be hundreds who did the same things and it didn’t work.
There’s certainly a strained mobility in the country. I said it was a “caste system” primarily because from my limited understanding of the Indian caste system. Where people are born into their caste and experience an entirely separate culture from the other castes. It’s possible that I misinterpreted what classism is and that’s a part of it as well.
