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I think the issue with inequality that bothers many people includes an extra feature, how difficult it is for someone to move between percentiles of wealth. If it were easy to join the top 10% in wealth via intelligence, grit, and hard-work, I doubt many would be bothered by even deeper inequality than the USA currently has. However, if it is both difficult to move up the wealth ladder and highly unequal, it is a recipe for social unrest.


This doesn't align with what I've read. For example:

https://www.cato.org/blog/middle-class-shrinking-households-...


I'm not sure that the CATO study indicates that social mobility is high, just that a certain strata has grown? Here's a good paper on social mobility.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210311...




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