We have social mobility, not a social lottery. Moving all the way from the bottom to the top might take a couple generations, which will obviously involve needing to win at a fierce competition.
Social mobility doesn't have anything to do with it really. Even if it is easier for the average citizen to become wealthy, that doesn't entail that the ones actually doing meritorious work are being rewarded accordingly. The "merit" in your idea of a meritocracy only measures the ability to accrue wealth, which is meaningless (as proxy for the more general notion of merit) when rich assholes are rewriting the laws to their own benefit.
That sounds like a crap deal honestly. Come to the US, you'll probably still die poor, but at least maybe your grandchildren will do well. *
* does not apply if you or your children get shot by the police for being the wrong shade of brown, maimed by unsafe working conditions associated with low-skilled labour, get sacked because you ask for a raise, etc.
Seriously? I'm guessing you don't have children. Working to improve the life of your kids and grandkids is a real driver, and is the subject of the classic immigrant story for millions of people the world over.
Police kill ~1000 people per year in the US and roughly half are white. While there is an inarguabale disparity there, that means your chances of getting shot by police are extremely, vanishingly rare. And the numbers killed each year is in steep decline. Let's abandon the fear mongering rhetoric of getting shot by police is any real threat. It makes good headlines but it's just not likely to happen to 99.9999% of people no matter their "shade of brown" as you say.
There are more worker protections, more systemic empowerment of people in all classes, all genders, all faiths, all backgrounds than ever in history. There's a lot of work to be done and the system is by no means equal. Wealth disparity is real. But the fact is there's more learning resources available for free with which to bootstrap yourself than ever. As someone descended from hard working immigrants who valued education, and who is part of an incredibly racially diverse family, I don't think it's a crap deal at all.
I knew a girl from a bad part of la. She was Latino. One time she complained to me how the cops harass her friends when they walk around the neighborhood. I asked her what kind of clothes her friends wear, and she obviously replied that they wear saggy pants and black hoodies and so on. I said that if I were in their situation, I would dress in clothes that are impossible to get you mistaken for a drug dealer or a gang banger — simple jeans and a tucked in shirt with a collar. That would be my plan if I were in their situation and I wanted the cops to stop. She just scrunched her eyebrows and said that “we don’t have to change they way we dress!” Well you don’t have to go to college or start your own business or wear any clothes at all but unfortunately you are subject to the economy and the world and you can’t have a nice life and never do anything at all to deliberately secure that end. Sorry.
That looks an awful lot like a meritocracy.