It's true, the nordic countries do well on Social Mobility [1] (measure of intergenerational economic mobility). However, I think we can all agree that they're fairly homogenous ethnically & culturally (e.g. as measured by Fearon's measure [2]), and that these factors play a huge role in social mobility in places like the United States.

In fact, if you jointly score social mobility & ethnic diversity, the United States looks to come out very close to the top (if not the top). It's probably not a "one size fits all" solution, though social safety nets are obviously a critical part of the equation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_et...

I think it's not the tax rate; most despotic regimes grab as much or even more from their subjects.

It's the legal framework, the laws being actually enforced (low corruption), and just the culture of the lay people who learned to trust each other after centuries of that. Formally Sweden is a kingdom while Nigeria is a democratic republic, but it does not change much.

If it was only 30-35% to achieve this that would be great.

Sweden has a ~55% marginal tax rate for everything over SEK 309,000 (approx 55k USD).

55k USD isn’t much in most US tech companies.

It's a lot more than the US median salary though (31 kUSD). And 309 kSEK is roughly the arithmetic mean income in Sweden so most people are paying less than that marginal tax rate.

Yes agree, but would disagree that most of the tax revenue comes from most of the people. Ie the top earners (1% or 10% or whatever) pay a significant portion of the tax take, well beyond their percentage of the population. I’m not making any judgment on if that’s right or wrong morally, just making the point that 35% isn’t the top tax rate for many but not most people.