In a sense, the entire world has a caste system. But, America’s is more complicated. Certain established populations in the United States have certain types of jobs they typically do. The Jewish community is very active in Accounting, Legal, Arts, Education, and Entertainment type jobs. The black community is very active in government jobs. Whites are a little more complicated as they do most types of jobs except for things like hard outdoor labor, and a lot of high tech jobs. Jobs that are too physically or mentally hard are not often done by whites while more “average” jobs typically are.
Then, there are more complicated caste groups like Asians and Hispanics who have a shorter history in the United States (with the exception of New Mexico where they have a longer history.) 1st generation Asians will often have a nail salon, market, or do laborious jobs, while they push their children (often at gun point) to study hard and do something better when they grow up.
Although it looks like we have a caste system, it is more complicated in the case of Asians and Hispanics. The nail salon caste is Vietnamese and Korean, at least temporarily. But, it isn’t a permanent caste since their children will not be caught dead doing those types of jobs. 1st generation Hispanics will often do very hard physical labor jobs under the worst conditions often in factories or in the hot sun. However, their children tend to work indoors as shop clerks, administrators, or frequently as nurses.
What America lacks (and France as the case may be) is a caste that will do the hard jobs. The problem is that nobody born on American soil wants to work hard, and most people born on local soil are too dumb to do technical jobs. The technical and physically difficult tasks are normally done by immigrants. Immigrants do these jobs, but their children can’t or won’t do those types of jobs. So, then in twenty years we need to import another round of immigrants whose children will also not be able to do the jobs that they were brought here to do. This cycle won’t end until America has 2 billion people, there won’t be any more land, trees, or clean water, and yet there still will be nobody to do the hard work. What will we do?
300 years ago America had the same problem. In those days they brought slaves over. This is not a very moral solution to the problem. However, upon hindsight, they were able to get these slaves to do backbreaking work for more than one generation which would be impossible in modern circumstances.
Perhaps if America attached a value to honest hard work, it might be possible for American born people to actually do a little. Or if all Americans were encouraged to do a few years of physical work before graduating into a more sophisticated form of work that might help. America glamorizes education, and higher level jobs. But, we can’t all be brain surgeons. Someone has to clean the sewers. So, we might as well take pride in this type of work. In any case. I have to go. I have a sewer to clean.
But, the future of our behavior of depending on immigrants to do the hard jobs, and then having their kids (or anyone else’s kids) being willing to do those jobs is that our country will grow to a population of 1 billion, with very few being highly educated. This will make it easier for doctors and other higher level people to have a huge salary, and servants in the future. There will be little competition for higher level jobs as American will be more and more a land of paupers. The people immigrating to the United States in large numbers, and the people having the most children in America are desperately poor, and their descendants sometimes make it to the middle class, although most do not. The future is an escalation of poverty growing and growing and growing.