Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism

If you’re born poor, you die poortime. And so, when Polly Toynbee writes that the Blandenstudies prove that the British have become ‘more hermeticallysealed into the social class of their birth’ over time,she is simply wrong, as is Dominic Sandbrook when helaments the ‘sad death of opportunity in an increasinglyclass-bound Britain’ (Toynbee 2011; Sandbrook 2012b). Theacademic debate revolves only around whether the incomemobility data are sound.Astonishingly, this debate is hardly ever reflected in themainstream discussion of social mobility. On the few occasionswhen the controversy is mentioned, the findings ofthe sociologists are summarily dismissed. For example, inthe coalition government’s 2011 report on social mobilityentitled Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers, the governmentconcedes that:The evidence on social mobility is complex and sometimescontradictory.It nevertheless immediately follows this by asserting(HM Government 2011: 15):But the broad picture is fairly clear: We currently haverelatively low levels of social mobility, both by internationalstandards and compared with the ‘baby boomer’generation born in the immediate post-war period.At least Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers acknowledgesthe existence of an academic debate. By 2013, theSocial Mobility and Child Poverty Commission (2013: 34)173