Well, you were apparently too far from that ruling minority. At the level of the shopkeepers/teachers/etc.

For the positions like for example even drivers for the high party members it starts getting unequal.

And about the nineties: inequality in the nineties is weird because very large amount of the criminals who got rich didn't bother to educate their children. Of course, some part of them opted for expensive teachers/schools or for sending children to the Western schools, but the "getting by force" attitude of the parents didn't really mesh well with learning.