[alltakendamned]

Though the background of billionaires tends to be different. Lots of business owner in the US, lots of old money in SE.

I'd say there's less opportunities for social mobility in Sweden than in the US, hard to get beyond the "middle class"

[kasperni]

Actually, the 5 Nordic countries are identical to the top 5 countries for social mobility in the World Economic Forum's Global Social Mobility Index [1].

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/these-are-the-10-coun...

[vlangber]

Not according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index

[Pfhreak]

I dunno, mobility in the US is hard and getting harder. I don't know about Sweden, but escaping the middle class in the US requires a massive income.

[piva00]

I call bullshit on this one. I know and have seen many people become successful in Sweden growing out of lower/middle-class. It's much easier to do it when you have free access to quality education, regardless to your current social standing, where people have safety nets so they are able to take risks instead of having to cling to their job that also provides their health insurance.

The US seems to suffer of some kind of fetishisation of suffering, where you see those heart warming stories that look great on the surface (poor kids getting scholarships because of some sport, single parents making their way out of poverty juggling 2 jobs and getting an education and so on) but that shouldn't ever be a great story for the richest society in history...

Social mobility in the US is a fight against odds, not a possibility, people still have some social mobility DESPITE American society policies, not because of them.

Imagine how many people in the US could be contributing with an idea to a great product/company if they knew they could run out of their savings and still not be homeless, without health insurance and not starving? If the US allowed normal people to take risks when they see opportunities it'd be an even richer society, not even accounting for the overall happinness, lowest levels of stress and all of the ill side-effects of the current state of American society.