Comment by ryanwaggoner

Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on guesses, we have measures of economic mobility. In particular, how likely is it that someone born into a particular quintile moves to a higher (or lower) quintile?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_th...

Answer: it’s not great and getting worse, but not as dire as you portray.