That only works if your definition of class is purely economical, and you stop looking at the 0.01% If your definition of class is more European, it's perfectl

That only works if your definition of class is purely economical, and you stop looking at the 0.01% If your definition of class is more European, it's perfectly possible to be upper class and have a down generation, economically speaking, while your network remains upper class, and your children go right up again, as they don't make the same relatively low salary choices of their parents. This is a well measured situation all over the world, and the US is not special. See the well known studies in Italy, where ancestry and class correlations are linked for over a dozen generations. But let's say all you care about is income, and look at intergenerational income mobility. It's not as if the United State does all that well, and most of the difference is emigration of high class immigrants. The doctor that can't get a job in the US as a doctor, but whose children vastly outearn them, becoming relatively high class quite quickly. See https://www.chicagofed.org/research/mobility/intergenerational-economic-mobility https://www.chicagofed.org/research/mobility/intergeneration....