> “John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
There's plenty of circumstantial evidence to back this up. The 2000 election is a good example although I can't find a good quote for this. Gore famously daemonized the "top 1%". An illuminating poll in 2000 revealed that 19% of Americans thought they were the "top 1%" and another 20% thought they would be someday. So 39% of the population thought of themselves as the "top 1%".
Americans also love the slippery slope fallacy. The idea, that you allude to, is that people will defend Jeff Bezos's taxes being raised because the next step is apparently them coming for the working class.
This too is propaganda. B does not necessarily follow from A. But political leaders and plutocrats are happy to use this argument to their own benefit. It's the sort of argument people make when they have no argument.
It's a byproduct of American exceptionalism [2].
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/328134-john-steinbeck-once-...
