> You keep harping on the US, but it is one of - if not the most - upwardly mobile societies in history.
The data doesn't support your conclusions. The US has lower social mobility than many of its (more redistributive) peers in the developed world. [1]
1 - https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-social-mobility-index...
Please enumerate these instances and support the claim that in each of them mobility is reduced due to redistribution.
Without that, this sounds like subjective impression shaped by ideological preference being presented as if it were evidence for the ideological preference that produced it.
Much of Western-Europe show you otherwise, I'm not sure how you could have missed that?
> In every instance I've seen, redistribution does limit mobility - as well as introduces a middleman (the redistributors that steal/war/lie/oppress), corruption, politics, and extreme inefficiencies.
Care to explain? Or are you just being childishly contrarian which your last sentence seem to suggest?
I’m not sure whether this applies to you (I’m not implying that it does), but I continually find it interesting to hear Americans expressing the fear that acting to reduce inequality will somehow limit social mobility, as if they don’t realize that much of the developed world has greater social mobility than their country (or that many countries also rate higher in measures of social welfare, despite having greater social mobility and lower inequality).