Punjana I was also just pondering that the focus on different generations diverts quite a lot of attention away from the problem of an ever widening wealth and opportunity gap across all age groups.
My feeling is that we are reverting to "the Victorian/Edwardian norm" after a fifty year-ish anomaly created by the destruction of wealth, property and inherited privilege caused by the two world wars. That the post-war experience of social mobility, more income equality, more equality of opportunity was a "blip", not evidence of a natural path of enlightened social progressiveness.
When you look at the British context in the 20th century, you have to recognise just how much destruction the first world war caused. It wiped out a generation of young men, some 700,000 plus in the UK. That is approximately equivalent to the entire annual birth rate in Britain today (and we have upwards of 20 million more in population than back in 1914).
So there were 700,000 fewer men in the UK in 1920 than there should have been. This had extraordinary demographic implications: those 700,000 men thus never needed jobs, homes, wives or fathered children in the 20s, 30s or 40s (you are looking at possibly over 1.5 million children that were never born, just from that generation alone). It's also important to recognise that a significant percentage of these young men were from extremely privileged backgrounds: public school alumni died at twice the rate of the average Tommy. Eton lost over 1000 former alumni, which was more than the size of the entire school in 1914.
So, from this, you can start to see how the old class and socio-economic system was dealt a very harsh blow. Take the fact that a lot of the young of the privileged elite class were wiped out. Who then took their roles in society, politics and culture? Who then ran their family businesses or estates?
This is when we start to see the first signs of "social mobility". This is when we see the advent of the Labour party. And, of course, we do because the men who would have previously taken those roles are now dead, leaving those opportunities open for other types of people.
Then WW2 comes along. We see another 383,000 military deaths with 67,000 civilian deaths, and again, a huge destruction of wealth.
In short, over a thirty year period, Britain loses a million plus young men (who then never father children). We are talking about a demographic gap that could number, by 1950, six million or more people ... all of whom would have been reliant on the British labour market, would have needed homes and services, but don't because they were either killed or never born.
And what happens when something comes along that eradicates huge numbers of the population over time? Well, labour market supply is far lower than it should be, so wages rise. Opportunities open up. There's no longer dynastic strangleholds on political positions or business opportunities. Social mobility occurs.
Our problem now is that all those old class, wealth, power and privilege systems have re-consolidated, and are far more formidable than ever. We are seeing the start of political and business dynasties again. We are seeing the accumulation of vast wealth in assets, businesses and property, which, for the Edwardian elites, were eradicated in the loss of wealth caused by WW1 and the need for the state to tax heavily (death and estate taxes) to cover the coat of the war.
And I haven't even gone into the political, economic and social implications of the destruction of state and private wealth caused by the two world wars, but, as an illustration, WW1 wiped out the value of the endowments and assets held by Oxford and Cambridge, and the cost to the British state of both WW1 and WW2 was some £1019 billion in today's money, which is two thirds of Britain's annual GDP today.
In short, we have reverted to the 19th century economic, political and cultural status quo.