Social Immobility

[Aberdeen]

Live Science reported on a study by Gregory Clark, an economist at the University of California, who looked at social mobility in Britain. He assumed that once someone joined the social and economic elite, the prominence of their family would only last for a few generations. Instead, he found that the same families have been dominating British society for hundreds of years.

www.livescience.com/48951-surnames-social-mobility.html

 

[LeBrok]

Maybe Britain needs a revolution to mix things up?

 

[Aberdeen]

Maybe Britain needs a revolution to mix things up?

I would say so. Usually the danger with revolution is that the new elite that takes over may be worse than the previous one, or less inclusive, but I doubt any revolution in Britain would be a step backward unless it was something really nihilistic and needlessly destructive. But even when that seems to be the case in the short run, perhaps a revolution is really necessary when a society becomes really stagnant. For example, you may feel that communism hurt Poland, regardless of what problems existed previously, but when I look at the communist revolution in China, although it produced some really nasty results at first, I do think that without it China would probably still be in the dark ages - sort of where Britain is now. Whereas Chinese society has been transformed, and now if they could just get another revolution to sweep away the communist hierarchy and replace it with democracy, they'd be doing fine.

 

[hope]

I agree with the study regarding statement that, affluent class plays with and marries from same class. Wealth, titles and old school friendships keep these same people sticking at the top. Titles and estates are passed on. Posh children go to private school and whether they come out remarkably clever or noticeably dumb, they still seem to get a high income job..and the process repeats.
For at time in the 60s there were more jobs to go around and the poorer could work their way up to a much better position, if they were bright. Now there are fewer jobs and the mobility is static.

 

[arvistro]

Better long term wealthy families and average Brit salary, than top East European salary but without those wealthy families