Great diary, Andy. And some great pointers. Here is the link to the report by Hertz for the CAP. Skimming through the overview, I picked this out that may be of interest to people here:

By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents' income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States.

Mobility, flexibility, they tell us : well yes, why not?