It’s hard to buy into the existence of something you’ve never seen. You know the sort of thing: ghosts, unicorns, Santa, social mobility.

According to a poll, young people aged 18 to 24 are the most pessimistic about their future. They think the gaps between social classes are large, and that it’s harder for those at a social disadvantage to progress. Essentially they believe what many of us have always known to be true – in this country being born rich is one of the most important deciding factors in your ability to succeed in life.

It’s tragic, because it wasn’t supposed to be this way. When my parents’ generation voted for Tony Blair in 1997, they hoped it would be the beginning of real change. Instead what they ended up with was 13 years of a nominally Labour government more interested in appealing to the masses than fighting for those who needed it. It was that government which first introduced university tuition fees, paving the way for today’s exorbitant cost of higher education. It enthusiastically continued the Conservative legacy of focusing more on people rich enough to buy a home than those disadvantaged enough to have nowhere to live. Gordon Brown lowered corporation tax while increasing national insurance; he introduced tax credits which kick-started our obsession with vilifying the unemployed and painting those who use what little is left of a welfare state as “lazy” or “scroungers”.

Those of us born in the 1990s have never seen a truly left-wing government committed to ensuring a baseline of equal opportunity for everyone, regardless of where they grew up or what their parents did for a living.

Those surveyed for the poll will barely remember the world pre-recession. They never reaped the benefits of a booming economy, yet they have been paying the price for the crash caused by the recklessness of those who did. Despite a promise that schools would be exempt from cruel austerity measures, the amount spent per pupil has decreased by 8 per cent since 2010, leaving state schools overcrowded and unable to meet pupils’ needs . Yet every elected prime minister since John Major has been privately educated, with an Oxbridge degree.

It’s always funny to hear the middle-aged voters who caused this mess moan about all the idealistic youngsters voting for Jeremy Corbyn. Apparently his policies are just absolutely absurd and we simply don’t get it. Policies like nationalisation, which was a key part of Labour’s ideology until Tony Blair took it upon himself to abandon it; like actually tackling homelessness so that at the very least we can live in a country where everyone is entitled to a roof over their head; like increasing the taxes paid by the richest to invest in social structures which would benefit us all.

Somehow, we’ve ended up believing the rhetoric that addressing the gap between richest and poorest is radical, unelectable, impossible. It’s not, we’ve just never seen anyone in power try. Blair’s pseudo-Labour may have managed to pull the wool over the eyes of the generations that came before us, but we’ve seen what pandering to wealth while ignoring poverty does to a country – and we know better.

That young people today are realistic about the world they’re facing is good news for us all. No longer will we be brainwashed into believing that opportunities are equal. When a teenager from a council estate needs to hand out his CVs in the richest part of London in order to get a job and we see it as a charming story of gumption rather than the pinnacle of a broken system, we’ve lost our way.

In a world where the power of privilege is becoming increasingly well-understood, we must remember that class is an important piece of the puzzle. The richest stay rich by keeping the rest of us poor, so it’s in their interest to keep us out of their elite schools, exclusive neighbourhoods and astronomically paid jobs. And it works. IFS figures released last year showed that in 2012 someone from the richest fifth of households earned an average of 88 per cent more than those from the poorest families in 2012, while in 2000 the gap was 47 per cent.