I recently heard about a startup that tried to give its employees the opportunity to invest at a level that a normal person could do, and they would accept the risk for that, but could ultimately gain if the company succeeded, like a normal investor. However, the legal requirement to invest in that stage was that they had to be "verified investors," with income higher than most employees had, and also with substantial net worth. So that fell through, because the deck is stacked in favor of the wealthy even if middle class people are willing to take the kind of risk rich people supposedly do (let's assume that they're not investing with debt, like Elon Musk is with Twitter or like hedge funds do with companies they plan to bleed dry). Trickle-down economics sounds great in theory, but in practice, money has the most value when it circulates, and people with more money than they need hold more of their money out of circulation than people living paycheck to paycheck. This is going to get worse with interest rates rising (though the exit of money to bank accounts could well curb inflation, again to the benefit of the rich and the detriment of the poor).

I also don't think America is really a free market. The regulations favor wealth transfer upward, across the board. Companies reap the profits and privatize the risk, often paying no taxes or even negative tax. This happens because lobbyists are expensive, so if you don't already have money you're not paying someone to sit down with your Congressman and persuade him to vote in your interests (assuming you have time to step off the treadmill a moment to consider what that would mean in terms of legislation). We are VERY far out of balance to the right, and what now passes as the far left would have been called a "Regan Democrat" 30 years or so ago.