>but reaching the end goal is a bad state? Hilarious.
To make a defense, reaching the end goal implies that one (or more likely, one's children) have stopped striving, stopped contributing to society, and are enjoying a parasitic lifestyle of indolent luxury.
More to the point, it makes sense that "upper-class" is pejorative in the US because the US was settled in large part by people from Europe fleeing from the aristocratic upper-class there. The people here specifically wanted to contrast themselves from the rentier upper-classes in the "home countries".
To make a defense, reaching the end goal implies that one (or more likely, one's children) have stopped striving, stopped contributing to society, and are enjoying a parasitic lifestyle of indolent luxury.
More to the point, it makes sense that "upper-class" is pejorative in the US because the US was settled in large part by people from Europe fleeing from the aristocratic upper-class there. The people here specifically wanted to contrast themselves from the rentier upper-classes in the "home countries".