Social mobility is impossible in the UK. Don't waste your energy.

[Your Old Comrade]

My personal experience about social mobility in the UK, and how I don't believe it is possible to move up a social class in one's lifetime.

[frankhammer]

Emigrate to the Commonwealth. Social classes, as they are in the UK, are a thing of the past.

[Your Old Comrade]

Emigrate to the Commonwealth. Social classes, as they are in the UK, are a thing of the past.

I guess they very much aren't. Listening to this woman is rather depressing.

[Petalpusher]

Social mobility has never been potentially higher than it is now. it's simply not through regular means anymore, wage earnings or studying. In the past it was much more difficult to extricate from poverty or lower social classes, as it's still mainly tied to economical status and very few people were getting rich out of nowhere. At least it was taking a considerable amount of time to get there, often several generations.

Even our own perception of it has changed. Seeing some wonderful home on the hills for example or some supercar in the middle of the night, people don't wonder what college was attended to explain it, or who this guy is working for. Everybody knows there was certainly something else going on. Yet most are stuck in this idea that to climb the social ladder you have to do it by the book, get good grades, a career plan, without ever breaking any rules... That was the most effective maybe until 50 years ago.

I think people don't realize how much social startification is coming to the world in this regard, as there are more and more people who get rich while the lower economic classes are equalizing. It won't be little clubs anymore but entirely different separated lifestyles, a breakaway autonomous society, only two classes, those who will have the means for it and those who won't.