As much wealth is being stolen, a lot of it is still overblown. Yes, at a lower income of under $30k a year (outside of large cities) it's really going to be tough to save your scraps of money to make progress, but as you do, it gets easier. It should be possible for most Americans to claw their way to $50k a year in most fields, and at that point it's actually not too difficult to save money if you are very frugal.