Milburn on social mobility

There’s something that puzzles me about Milburn’s report on social mobility. A major claim in it is this:

There is likely to be a need for many more professionals in future. Some studies suggest that up to nine new jobs in ten created over the next decade will be in professional and managerial sectors. Once retirements are taken into account, around seven million new professionals may be needed (p21)

I’m sceptical of this. Will we really have more civil servants or journalists or bankers in future? Do we really need even more accountants or managers or lawyers?
But let’s assume this claim is true. If this is the case, then surely the professions will open themselves up to people from poorer backgrounds by necessity, without the need for any government intervention.
Put it this way. Milburn says:

Today’s younger professionals (born in 1970) typically grew up in a family with an income 27% above that of the average family (p19).

But let’s assume his futurology proves too pessimistic, and all future jobs will be professional. Then, by definition, the typical professional will have grown up in a family with average income. Simple maths will have solved the “problem” of social mobility on Milburn’s definition, without the need for intervention.
Of course, the futurology could well be wrong, and the professions will remain minority occupations. But if this is the case, then aren’t Milburn’s recommendations too weak? If there remains only little “room at the top” then social mobility requires - by definition - that people from rich families be downwardly mobile. And yet Milburn gives us no ways of achieving this - which is not surprising as rich families will naturally fight hard to give their children a good start.
My priors remain - that social mobility is a foul ideal, and is technically unattainable anyway. For serious egalitarians, the challenge is not: how can we get a few people from poor families to join the rich and powerful? It‘s: how can we overthrow the rich and powerful.

Comments

[Luis Enrique]

If I understand you correctly, then what you mean by 'overthrow' in your last para could be rephrased: how do we ensure that there is no such thing as "the rich and powerful" anymore?

It's not just organizational hierarchies that create subsets of rich and powerful people, it's scare productive capabilities combined with bargaining power.

If a few people have a highly valued skill (say, being a doctor) and are able to form some sort of collective block to protect themselves from free entry increasing the supply of doctors (or perhaps there is just a limited supply of suitable candidate doctors) and they can organize to protect themselves from price competition, then such types are always going to be rich, aren't they? How are you going to overthrow that, without heavy intervention in the market - wage and price controls, for instance?

De-skilling may be part of the answer (as you suggest) but how far can that take us? (how many highly-paid jobs can realistically be de-skilled - if skill is interpreted broadly to include, say, "having the right social network"). How long would we have to wait until technology enables us to "de-skill" being a surgeon?

Also, is de-skilling and whatever else you think will overthrow the rich and powerful, something that serious egalitarians must sit back and wait to emerge, or is it something politics can bring about?

Do you think egalitarianism is important enough to contemplate wage and price controls?

[Frank the sales forecaster]

Plasticity of the social milieu is one of s&n conditions for a technological society. Deny technology and you're Pol Pot or Ted Krysinski, so embrace technology and live with the required features of a technological society. Technology for technology's sake, don't mind the awfulness of the s&n conditions.

As to the greedy rich, they were born with a much higher declining marginal utility of money. At some relatively low income most middle managers will start to consider other motivators (team, recognition, social do-good activities) more important than more money. This usually mistifies sr. managers as they haven't reached their declining marginal utility of money, and being well trained negotiators, give the middle managers what they value more than more money (those other motivators) and keep the money for themselves.

No rich? Just get everyone to have the same declining marginal utility of money.

[[email protected]]

You are right to be sceptical. You see Milburn and Labour come from a school called 'make work'.

You see it with the expenses scandal. We crewed up, and now lets create loads of jobs.

But the thousands of specification jobs that they have created the last few years is crushing the life out of public services. People specify and set targets and an army of inspectors ensures that they are met.

You can see if all summed up in the Audit Commission's attack on John Seddon for suggesting that it is possible not to touch front line services but save hundreds of millions of those who specify and inspect work.

This has caused a huge personal attack upon Seddon. See the dabate the LOCAL GOVERNMENT CHRONICLE and hear the stories of those working in the public sector.

So, no we don't need more managers, we need more efficient services. This government has really screwed over the public sector and if given the chance they will keep on doing it with their central target driven top-down hierarchy.

[alanm]

What I don't quite get about this report was that much of the blame for professionals coming from professional families was laid at their social networks - intern opportunities, knowledge of options and the like.

I'm not quite sure what government can do about this social capital. Can you stop your dad having a word with the Jeremy Vine show producer? So informal and nebulous to be beyond control.

[Jamal Akhbar]

What is amusing about Milburn (apart from the obvious failure to link failed spending on education to outcomes) is the assumption that a) there is a working class - in the mid-Victorian sense, and b) that "working class people" (whoever they are) would want to aspire to be like Milburn and the other office monkeys. This liberal narrative is not dead, it's just resting, etc.

[Philip Painter]

I think that social inequality is a worse state than social immobility. Comprehensive progressive taxation and maybe the top-end equivalent of the minimum wage would go some way to solve that.

[Hugo]

"For serious egalitarians, the challenge is... how can we overthrow the rich and powerful."

Really? I agree with Luis. The challenge is to make the poor rich.

[rolex yachtmaster]

And a lot of it reflects a switch from bank deposits to securities; foreigners “other investments” in the UK, http://www.watchgy.com/ mostly bank deposits, fell by £143.2bn in Q1. And of course there’s no guarantee such buying will continue.
http://www.watchgy.com/tag-heuer-c-24.html
http://www.watchgy.com/rolex-submariner-c-8.html