The poor will always appear oppressed in every political and economic system. The fact that they exist seems to belie a problem somewhere. It is like the anthropic fallacy. Humans exist, and then we wonder how perfect the universe is that allows such a fact.
The problem with your arguments, which all seem to hinge on the plight of the poor, is that every single economic system in history has had a huge population of the poor and wretched. You need to find something that DIFFERS between these systems to show how one is inferior to another.
From where I sit, it seems to me that the poor in a capitalist system have it much better than the Russian communist poor, where 200 million or so people starved to death. Those are real people, even though the hugeness of that number almost makes it impossible to grasp the horror. As a matter of fact, I would posit that starvation rates would be as good an indicator of economic success as anything else. The reason is simple, if you are at various levels of poverty, your base need for sustenance will always prevail. It will be the last thing you go without.
When the United States played around with planned economies from ~1920-40 saw the largest rates of starvation here. The divergence away from capitalism literally starved people to death. Without even looking at the statistics, but having seen enough graphs and charts in my weekly Economists, I can tell you that capitalism succeeds in feeding its members better than any other system of economics ever devised.
Does it create absolute equality? No. And that is the crux for you and the anti-meritocratic. For some reason you seem to want everyone equally rewarded for unequal effort. The bizarre thing is that this seems morally justifiable to you somehow. Richness and Poorness seems arbitrary and unfair, rather than seeing how many people work their butts off for rewards, and how many sit around doing nothing and gaining little.
Finally, and perhaps the best measure of an economic system's worth is to look at the flow of people into and out of various economic entities. Capitalist countries have a need for walls to keep immigrants out, while socialist and communist countries have always had a problem erecting walls to keep emigrants IN their countries. Vietnam, Russia, Cuba, Mexico, China, and East Berlin all come immediately to mind. It is hard to argue with the fact that people risk their lives to get OUT of one system and again risk them to get INTO another.
Oh... but I'm sure all these people are morons, and you know what is best for them, and if only everyone would adopt all of your sensibilities the universe would be a gloriously noble place.
