Actually, I think it's a system which uses a medium of exchange to facilitate trade, e.g. capital. As opposed to a barter system. You can have a capitalist system without a free market. I think you could even have a communist system which uses capital to assign value, technically.
Doesn't matter when the cost of living is outpacing wages, the poverty line is held artificially low and the wealth gap is growing absurdly fast. Material conditions are getting significantly worse, and telling people "uhm actually the poverty rate is lower" doesn't help people pay rent or put food on the table.
Feudalism is alive and well and it's name is capitalism, and I'm not alluding to some vague comparison I mean it literally. Farmers in the US specifically are increasingly working land they do not own because it's bought up by investors and private equity. Bill Gates owns a fuck ton of farmland but he sure as hell isn't working it.