One of the interesting things about having a class system is that it works pretty much identically to having a racist system. In some respects, a class system is a kind of advanced form of racism because it allows you to discriminate against people who look like you.
Perhaps more importantly, unlike rascism and to a lesser degree religious intolerance, is that if you are in possession of the vast majority of capital and the rewards of other people's labour, then you can actively rig the game in your favour in the long run. Working hard produces a smallish reward. Controlling other people's labour gives you the reward which would otherwise be due to them. However, controlling capital and especially other people's money, means that the rewards which would be due to wages, rents, dividends, and management fees, condensate to you far harder and faster than to anyone who has to actually work for a reasonable living.
Let's assume that it costs ₱10,000 to live a rudely boring and middling life in Pallet Town.
If you get a job at Silph Co. making Silph-scopes and other gadgets and widgets, on a wage of ₱10,000, then:
₱10,000 - ₱10,000 = ₱0.
This is in fact the set of conditions most people, in most cases. They earn a wage to live, and there isn't really a lot left over.
However, someone who owns ₱250,000 can expect to get a 4% return on capital in the long run (being the average rate of inflation since 1 Anno Urbitae). Thus:
₱250,000 x 4% = ₱10,000.
Yes, ₱10,000 - ₱10,000 = ₱0 but such a person would still be able to work and earn their own wage; which means that in the long run, the gap between people who need to work as opposed to those who could in theory merely live off the interest, must invariably widen.
If you are in possession of capital, then you can also 'invest' in the apparatus of society itself, such as schools and universities, guilds and associations, by making these fee collecting institutions. Fees are a barrier to entry; which means that you can keep out the people who have to actually work for a living. This also has the added benefit of acting as a set of economic signals; which means that future employers can actively discriminate on the grounds of things like postcodes and where someone went to school, to actively keep entire classes of people out of your places of privilege.
Of course if you are in possession of capital, then you can also change the narrative and openly lie about the fact. Since people believe that working hard is what generates rewards, then you can hold out the lie that if people work hard, then they will be rewarded. This is despite the fact that you by virtue of controlling other people's labour and capital, already collect their rewards as well.
It is even better if you can actually make poorer people subsidise your schools and universities, guilds and associations. If you can manipulate government so that they will pay your preferred institutions subsidies (using the narrative that all children deserve an education), then not only can you exclude poorer people from entry but you can make them pay for the places that they are excluded from.
Since buildings are very big pieces of capital infrastructure, then if you pay people so very little wages that they have no choice but to rent somewhere to live from you (because while being homeless is an option, it is not desirable), then you can take away their wage almost immediately after you've given it to them.
The really fun thing about all of this is that if you are in possession of media outlets, then you can gently wash the general public's mind in the marination of "personal responsibility". People will naturally resent having to pay anything in taxation, so by constantly purring the message that you should be responsible for your own fate (even though all of the above suggests that that isn't actually true), then you can actively make the moral argument that poverty is actually their fault. Furthermore, because richer people also resent having to pay anything in taxation, then you can also poison their minds into actually othering all of the poorer people to the point where they are seen as less than, and maybe even subhuman.
Since we've already established that there are different schools and universities, guilds and associations, then we've already segregated people since birth. Because people never have to look at poorer people, then they don't even have to imagine them as being people with lives. They are just economic units to be plugged in where (and if) appropriate. That's the most hilarious thing of all because then we can come after their ₱10,000 and take that away by replacing them with machines which cost ₱100 per year, and it will also be poorer people's fault for not working hard enough.
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