And anecdotally, pretty much anyone I know who isn't the child of a doctor or lawyer is doing better than their parents.
[1]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/millennials-just-wealthy-pare...
I don't think your rebuttal addresses the data I linked at all or supports the parent point at all
Upward mobility is definitely down and the USA is no longer the world leader by some measurements. I get that won't persuade everyone but I'm happy to debate on that data instead of an unrelated discussion point even if it is interesting.
The median income of the lowest quintile has done slightly better than inflation since 1967, but the 5th quintile has as we all know gone up precipitously. The 4th quintile has beaten inflation by something like 30k. So rising from the 1st to the 4th quintile is still quite a lot of mobility.
As far as the comparisons globally, they're ranking countries based on "education, access to technology, healthcare, social protection and employment opportunities" which has the implicit assumption baked in that those 5 metrics are proxies for social mobility. They might be, but why not actually measure the thing you care about? Social mobility to me means changing social classes based on income. Something like moving from a 25k/yr household to a 75k/yr household, or moving from a 75k/yr household to a 200k/yr household, maybe another jump up to 500k or a million/yr.
It seems to me that there is a much more equal distribution of incomes and outcomes in the countries you linked. That makes me think it would be much harder to go from being middle class to upper class in those countries than in the US, simply because almost everybody is part of the middle class. Thus, I think if you measured what most immigrants (and what I) actually care about when we hear about "social mobility," then the countries you mentioned would have great social mobility into the middle class, and basically no other social mobility.
Actually the data I've seen states one is way more likely to go from the bottom 20% to the top 20% in many other countries than if you were doing it in the USA.
I'm open to any counter data, but I've read these same numbers in several sources and you can tease it out of my first link.
To put it another way, it is much easier to increase your income in the US but harder to increase your income ranking. I think most people would prefer to have more money than a higher ranking given a choice between the two.
However, my only regret was that I did not leave sooner, it did not work out for well for me on the balance, IE I did make money, but my quality of life was less than middle class people have where I live now.
Sources:
* Growing up very poor in the USA, immigrating somewhere else. * The change over time https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-decline-of-upward-mobil... * Comparisons globally https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/social-mo...