[molson]

So won't income mobility be better if more people are worse off than their parents? Those seem like competing concepts. We want people to move up relative to others, but we also don't want anyone doing worse than their parents that they're replacing. And not just the super rich. From someone to move up from the 2nd 20% to the 3rd 20%, someone, or someone's child who they are replacing, had to drop down from the 3rd to 2nd. Someone's upper middle class kid has to be worse off than their parents (relative to others), and drop down below someone's lower middle class kid who greatly exceeds his parents. I think that's fine, a country is better off if we recognize the talent in the lower classes. But I don't see a lot of attention paid to that necessary part of the equation.

I think standard of living is a more important concept than wealth and income relative to others. If we nuked the top 10% and their wealth from the face of the earth, our income equality and mobility numbers would look better. But we wouldn't be any better off, and we'd be deprived of a lot of tax revenue. There's not a fixed amount of money in the world. Capitalism creates wealth. I think the super-rich are an asset that should just be taxed much, much, much more.

Edit: I also wonder if the difference between the 2nd 20% and the 3rd 20% in income and/or wealth someplace like Sweden or Denmark is so small because so many people are basically in the same boat financially, that it might not take much at all to drop or rise one bracket. Where in the U.S., a similar increase relative to others would be much more statistically unlikely, but much more noticeable to your standard of living.