Problem:
While post-modernism as a "cultural movement was all about rejecting elitist, bourgeois viewpoints and empowering the most common of us being that upward movement in society ought not to be dictated by birth or social class," your point that "it ought to be about the effort & ability of the individual to make the most of his life" encounters the ethical barrier of what restraints should there be on an individual? What is the role of law? What is the role of social mores? Those in power write the laws; if they share the same backgrounds as those out of power, then the laws become designed to keep the status quo so that those in power stay there.