The US isn't different for 'regular' poor people. Two years of community college to be a nurse and you're good to go with a job in any city.

Except in the US there are enclaves of destitute poverty, generational poverty, extreme levels of incarceration, job prohibitions for low-level convicts (which can be 1/2 the men in some areas), high crime, schools with low graduation rates, weak access to things like dental care, poor transit options for medical care, pollution, insufficient care for the elderly, lack of mental health care, opioid addiction, children with high rates of lead poisoning, etc. Those people have the deck stacked against them.

I thought that in Germany you were essentially hand-picked by age 10 what educational track you would wind up on.

if you didn't get picked you can still unlock the University track

you'd need to study 3 years to get your Abitur, however (which is only 1 year more than Gymnasium folks would)

ps. this may be different by state

Literally everyone goes to the gymnasium nowadays.

You can go to college for free or extremely cheap in the US if you are poor as well. A lot of poor people don't know this which is a problem, but the option is still there.