[mynewwork]

The studies you're referencing are very misleading. Many countries have much lower variation in income than the US. Imagine two normal curves, but one (the US) is very flattened and one (northern Europe) with a sharp peak.

In the US moving from X to X+Y might only push you a few percent higher in rank, there are still a lot of people in the fat tails on both sides, while the same change in Scandinavia might represent a substantial rank change.

Perhaps the problem isn't that it's hard to move up in the US, the problem is that in northern Europe it's impossible to escape the rat race.