Importantly, the western version of caste is simpler, a nobility and a peasantry. This version was dominant in Europe and was brought by them to central and South America.
And while the noble classes are in effect no more, there are still many that aspire to the equivalent they think of as elitism. In Europe, that is the hidden impulse behind the EU, to restore, again the equivalent, of the unelected noble classes.
Today they imagine themselves as technocrats, though their urges to make their positions hereditary are irresistible.
In central and South America it is a more economic form. For example, most of the wealth in Mexico is kept and controlled by perhaps a dozen extremely wealthy families, who would never dream of their wealth elevating anyone else to their position.
Comparatively many American wealthy, who have no great impulse or compulsion that they can only enjoy their wealth if surrounded by poverty, create vast numbers of wealthy people as a side effect of their wealth, which bothers them not one whit.
There are some Americans who crave a European style self appointed elitism, fancying themselves as superior to other Americans and thus “destined to rule”; yet when their countrymen realize what they are, they do not elicit envy, but contempt and disdain.
And yet there is always a reaction to such obnoxious elitism, often found in extremist populism and egalitarianism. And in its own way and right, it is just as offensive and oppressive. It is also a recipe for perpetual revolution and discontent.
The peasant who overthrows the dictator, then becomes a dictator who then oppresses the other peasants like the dictator did before him.
Caste is not about money.