The easiest way to optimize for social mobility is to randomly reallocate everyone's wealth every X years.
I was making a point about social engineering. Similarly: if you optimize for low inequality, you get Cuba.
It's been ~10 years since I looked at the numbers, but I remember it being something like 30% of bankruptcy filings are due to medical issues and associated costs.
Maybe systemetizing it a priori would have a different impact on people's perception about the mechanism though?
Also, ceteris paribus, if you get ill and you've worked harder, you'll have more resources to help yourself, so you'll be less likely to be broke by the end of it. Under this system, how hard you worked doesn't increase your expected amount of money next year.
Also, all the rich would immediately flee the country.
[1]https://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/insured-b...
According to this https://www.yourmoney.com/credit-cards-loans/living-beyond-m... circa 10% of bankruptcy proceedings were due to ill health.
I don't think much can be drawn from that though as there are too many legal and cultural differences in the application of bankrupsy.
How would you get a mortgage on a house, or save for your kids' education if any wealth you accrue risks getting re-allocated?
(Guess it depends on your value of X)
I think you're conflating social mobility with income growth. all social mobility means is how easy it is to change your social status in terms of wealth. while it's true that randomly redistributing wealth will disincentivise hard work, it doesn't matter because the shuffling will still change everybody's social status.
I think that's a legitimately interesting question.
Maybe the actors in that situation would attempt to build systems that don't rely on having outcomes based on individuals accruing wealth for themselves, but instead on collective assets that everyone has access to at all times.
Pragmatically, yeah, there are all kinds of problems with this concept, but for me your question does more to make radical, frequent, and random wealth reallocation interesting than it does to point out a flaw with the idea.
Otherwise the work, money, and time are going to be wasted.
As for the second part of your comment - what if you didn't need to go into debt, and education was free?