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It looks very much like the rankings in recent United Nations human development best-place-to-live lists. (Canada slipped from its repeated #1 position a few years ago, and the Scandinavian countries moved up.)
It's also very similar to what you'd get if you ranked the countries by equality of income distribution. The "GINI index" is a measurement of how evenly income is distributed in a country -- i.e. of how concentrated it is in a few hands; the higher the score, the more concentrated income is in the higher-earning echelons, and the less there is left to go around in the lower-earning echelons.
The US has long had the highest score of any of those countries -- the most unequal income distribution -- with the UK in rather distant second place, followed by the others.
The inequality of income distribution has been growing in the US for years -- income is being redistributed upward, into the hands of the fewer and richer. This is true in Canada as well, but to a much smaller extent; Canada still ranks behind most European countries, but well ahead of the US, for equality of income distribution.
Equality of income distribution, rather than wealth itself, seems to be a good indicator of social health. Studies have indicated that murder rates, for instance, are more correlated to how income is distributed within a society than to what the average income in the society is. (Average income is a particularly meaningless statistic, by the way, when there is serious income inequality. There may be 10 people earning less than the average for every person earning more than the average.)
I'm struck by that "even Canada" remark in one of the posts. What, Canada's some backwater of rigid class division and impermeable class barriers? Uh, no. (I dunno, maybe it's just someplace with no "up" to bother being mobile to ...)
You take a society where basic health care is provided to everyone, public education is funded decently, access to higher education is not dependent on wealth (something that is becoming problematic here, but not nearly to the extent seen in the US), measures are taken to remove disincentives to women's participation in the work force (extended paid maternity leave), anti-discrimination and active measures to enhance minority participation are taken seriously, and at least a basic social safety net is provided for people who unemployed, disabled, old and the like (e.g. there is decent assisted housing, even if not enough, in Canada) ... and you're going to have a good start on the conditions that are needed for social mobility: health, education, a common basic set of resources and opportunities.
One thing I would point out is that the populations of the countries that rank highest on that list are generally much more homogeneous than, say, Canada. With 2 in 10 Canadians born outside Canada, some of the barriers they face will be artificial (bigotry, non-recognition of qualifications), but some barriers to mobility -- like not knowing the language -- can't be laid at the society's doorstep. (This was not a factor in the study itself, which seems to have considered only the native-born; but the second generation doesn't always completely overcome the disadvantages their parents were under.)
At bottom, the US, more than any comparable society, is increasingly a country of haves and have nots, and a country in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
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