Poverty can be a form of narrative control. Keep Americans impoverished and aware that bad luck or illness could destroy them, for example, and they won't have space for examining what their government is doing to other countries or why their elections never change anything.

This is one reason I'm dismissive of theories which claim you can let the rich keep their wealth and also provide for everyone else. No you can't, because the rich use poverty as a weapon and they're actively using their wealth to keep everyone else poor so they can rule them.

In a system where money equals power and power is relative, you naturally get a ruling plutocratic class which needs to keep everyone else poor in order to rule them. They use their massive influence over the political/media class in order to ensure that this happens.