No, that is true. Canada is comparable in almost every way to the USA, and yet social mobility is much higher in Canada. And it is higher still in the Scandinav

No, that is true. Canada is comparable in almost every way to the USA, and yet social mobility is much higher in Canada. And it is higher still in the Scandinavian countries. It's tempting to attribute this to social programs like medicare (which explains Canada and Norway), but England has a similarly lower rate of social mobility, despite being very comparable to Canada. This is just my speculation, but social class systems may also be a factor. The English class system is legendary, but Americans may not appreciate how stratified their society really is. http://books.google.com/books?id=qnPOqwsR5UsC&pg=PA239#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=qnPOqwsR5UsC&pg=PA239#v... http://www.suttontrust.com/reports/IntergenerationalMobility.pdf http://www.suttontrust.com/reports/IntergenerationalMobility... (For what it's worth, I just happened to have these references because I was arguing on Reddit with an anarchist who asserted there was no social mobility under capitalism. There is, but not as much as there can be, especially in the USA.)