> There was a time when the system worked better for people (at least for white males) - say the 1950s or 1960s

Even before adding qualifiers like “in America, in certain industries”, etc. You have to be very specific about what you mean by better and how you measure it.

There are certainly things that are worse now than then, but most of the time when someone actually measures it’s mostly true things were worse in the 50s and 60s.