Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Because the vibe I get is that it was better than today for the people who wanted to work hard... The "vibe" you get? You were there? I'd point out that during the Gilded Age, women were largely excluded from the work force, blacks were forced into sharecropping and tenant farming while under threat of racial violence including lynching, Chinese workers were forced into the most dangerous jobs and then punished for…
So you're saying that the mobility was a direct result of oppressing minorities? That's certainly a take. (See, we can both play this stupid game.) At the end of the day most of those downtrodden minorities you think you care about ultimately wound up creating successful ethnic communities, before we adopted, at the behest of people like you, central policy that dismantled them starting in the mid 20th century.
Take https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Miners%27_Tax_Act_of_1....
This is an example of the type of law that was passed during your "good vibes" period that was designed to push out non-white labor.
So the point that you don't want to seem to acknowledge: the period of time that you seem to be holding up as an ideal (read: where Americans could work hard and get ahead) was filled with laws and even violence that sought to restrict opportunity for non-whites and women.
This is historical fact, whether you like it or not.
> At the end of the day most of those downtrodden minorities you think you care about ultimately wound up creating successful ethnic communities, before we adopted, at the behest of people like you, central policy that dismantled them starting in the mid 20th century.
What in the world are you on?
But this is the perfect example of America today: you can't have a vigorous debate without somebody resorting to casting aspersions on another's intentions and blaming them for things that happened when they weren't even alive.