Unrestricted Social Mobility In America

I slowed my BMW down and turned my music off as I shoved my map and directions into my Marc Jacobs designer purse and made my turn onto the crumbling road. An eerie draft blew in from my windows, which I quickly rolled up, as I drove past rows of devastated apartment buildings. Some of the windows on the apartments were hastily boarded up with plywood and through others violent shouts erupted; garbage scattered the street creating a trail leading to the overflowing mounds of trash falling out of the dumpsters, which reeked of a pungent stench and created an involuntary nose cringe. I was anxious to turn around and drive far away from the unfamiliar and unappealing street, wishing I could wipe the image of this place from my memory. My uneasiness …show more content…
At first, with the acceleration of social mobility since the 1960s, a classless society for both nations seems realistic, but as a whole “there is less social mobility in Britain… and the United States than is generally supposed” (McCormick 68). With the lack of social mobility, “the rich tend to remain rich… and the gap between the rich and the poor is substantial,” so “in Britain and a number of other western countries… inequality has widened quite dramatically since about 1980” (McCormick 68; Westergaard 69). While the quality of life in Britain has increased tremendously and affluence has become more visible, there are still “about 150,000 people” homeless in Britain with numbers that “have increased in recent years” (McCormick 69). While the rich and poor continue to exist separately from one another, “predominant ideology has set out to dismiss this” (Westergaard 69). Previously I would have argued that a classless society exists, that social mobility is limitless. I viewed the world as a just place, a fair land with equality pulsing through its veins. Anything was possible for anyone; there were no excuses for missing out on the ever welcoming boat of success, but today I know that is not the …show more content…
To become less class-divided and have less unequal societies, Britain and America need to address the “growing divorce of the super class from society” and the conditions at the opposite end of the spectrum (Adonis 33). Terms like ‘classless society’ should be cast out. The term “helps foster the fallacy” that is “deeply rooted in Britain,” as well as America, “that the single test of a healthy society lies in the existence of ladders for those with ambition and ability but low class background” (Adonis 14). Just as I have faced that class divisions do exist and allowed a new norm to mould and take shape, America and Britain need to first accept their divided nations for what they are before moving on to create less inequalities in the balance of