While social mobility is important, look at the speed at which the economy transitions. There are tremendous costs imposed by corporate/social welfare programs

While social mobility is important, look at the speed at which the economy transitions. There are tremendous costs imposed by corporate/social welfare programs that prop up industries... they insulate workers from economic reality for a while and then suddenly reality catches up. We define ourselves by our training, our job, and we expect the economy to stand still and allow us to continue doing something we were trained to do decades ago... all the way until retirement. We feel indignation when a job goes away, and we feel that it's appropriate to be proud of skills that the economy no longer needs. This is absurd. Learn something new. Society provides plenty of opportunity, the problem is that people have unrealistic expectations of what amount of effort ought to result in a particular standard of living and a particular level of job security.