"school snobbery"

[dinkybinky]

I think it?s hysterical that some people think that if you child doesn?t attend a Grammar school or selective independent then they?re not academic. The level of ?school snobbery? that goes on is quite bewildering sometimes.

That's why the women who earn £100 a day thread was quite useful as people could say normal women and the sorts of things they did - from memory quite a few business consultants, women in IT and obviously some professionals too.

I don't know who it is being suggested I have said there is no one between £6 an hour and £100k a year. Of course there is.

The issue of whether cleaners should earn £200 an hour is not a wrong one to bring up though. Those saying that jobs like carer should be paid a lot more - what rate would they think is reasonable for a full time 9 - 5 job in a care home say.

At the moment we have a ridiculous system where someone on £13,500 minimum full time wage is also given housing benefit adn tax credits to subsidise the income rather than letting the market prevail. We had no minimum wage for a huge part of my life and having it has not led to more prosperity for the poor. It has just meant the state subsidies of workers are higher.

I was Oxbridge educated so my university peers are in your sample of highly successful individuals. I'd guess probably max 10% of them earn 100k or more. I'm sure it is possible to earn 100k without working in the city. I'm just pointing out that actually a lot of top professional careers of the kind you and Xenia are mentioning - doctor, lawyer etc - earn nothing like 100k. Even as a highly educated professional you have to be motivated by money to a certain degree to be earning that much - certainly if you are in a salaried position. I for instance would have to move to the states, as a university professor in the UK doesn't earn more than 80k tops.

IT jobs likewise pay that kind of silly money in city firms - salaries of 150k plus - but less than half that outside the city, even for the most prestigious firms in the country recruiting pretty much exclusively from Oxbridge PhDs in maths/physics.

You do not have to be motivated by money to earn that sort of salary. It's simply not true. Some people who earn that sort of money are motivated by money but so are some people who earn comparatively little. It's just a lazy generalisation with no basis in fact and motivated by bitterness and frankly it's just as bad as Cenuas favourite generalisations regarding housewives or SAHMs. But at least her generalisations aren't motivated by envy.

I don't believe either Xenia, Word or I have mentioned specifically doctors or lawyers as examples of highly paid people.

VCs earn more than £100K, incidentally. For what, I'm not entirely sure ;) I bet Brian Cox does too.

motivated by bitterness?! erm...I live in a wealthy city in a wealthy country in a wealthy household, I can't imagine being luckier than I am either financially or otherwise! I could have chosen to work in the city and earn that, but didn't. No sour grapes here.

It's not a lazy generalisation, it's an observation based on a sample of a highly educated peer group.

your observations are anecdote. All my friends from Cambridge are very high earners - but I don't try and construct arguments claiming that therefore everyone educated there is a very high earner and impossibly glamourous. I have never claimed that nobody earning a high salary is motivated by money I am merely pointing out that it is fallacious to claim that everyone is. And that it is certainly not a necessity to be so motivated. And people who aren't high earners keep telling me I'm a lier. Cheers for that.

Its more important to get up every morning and go and do a job that ?you love.? Happiness does not come from having x million in the bank. We have lived all over the world, we?ve had Yachts, private jets the works, but it didn?t make us happier. The money side of it was never the motivational driving force to get up in the morning; it was the fact that we love what we do.

Sorry for the typo - I do know that liar is spelled with an 'a'. although I'm not the worlds greatest speller or phone typer. And the signal keeps dropping.

I enjoy my job but I also enjoy the choices having a higher income gives me. For me there is a bit of a trade off. Yes my job has its downsides but it has enabled us to choose what school our children go to, its allowed DH to be a SAHD when the children were young and for him now to be starting his own business, we choose days out and holidays because they work for us as a family rather than solely being governed by budget etc.

Yes, the high earnings of women bring joy, freedom and if you love the work as many high earners do, pleasure and happiness too.

As for how many women earn over particular levels I am sure there are statistics for that. I don't know what women who own largish GP practices earn. I have advised a lot of successful women. I know some who own strings of pharmacies and dentistry practices and they definitely do earn a lot. They own a string you see rather than working for PAYE wages in boots as a pharmacists for 3 hours a day.

Academics - yes most of those don't earn much which they know when they pick that job. I don't know what both my 20 something daughters will earn - if you add their current salaries together it exceeds £100k already but individually they are not up to that level. I would be surprised if they never exceeded it but I don't have any one ambition for the children. In fact I would rather they owned than were hired even if initially they earned less as working for myself is as fun as my grandfather found it (and indeed his sisters) in about 1910.

I have never by the way said what I earned on here as far as I can remember. I might be that unemployed truck driver (male) from Scunthorpe for all we know (and yes I know quite a bit about the haulage industry too and some fairly rich people there too - again those who own rather than just drive someone else's truck).

So perhaps we should just all own our own truck and drive that, so that we can all be massively wealthy?

There's not a lot of money in haulage at the moment.Hauliers are going bust left right and centre

Buy our own pharmacy then?

Lots of relatively middle income people like to sit there saying nothing is possible, no one earns over £50k oh woe is me and a few women don't think like that and go out and do things. We need all types of people in the world. Thank goodness for the low paid defeatists as it makes things easier for those who have a different mindset.

You need money to set up your own pharmacy. I don't think there is anything wrong with having ambition and striving for that either, but some people have further to climb up the greasy pole no matter what their qualifications or ambition.

Well I can't use real examples but some people live in a bed sit for years and save every penny and work two jobs and put off having children for 10 years to built up enough to start a business and they plough it all into the business rather than a mortgage on a house. I am not suggesting owning pharmacies it the only route to doing well. If you have a professional qualification like pharmacist or dentist or whatever that often gives you a bit of an edge over others.

However the Sutton trust study found 20% of the very successful did not even get to university so it's by no means essential to have qualifications at all.

Who are those people? I've not seen them....

I like earning what I earn as an academic, it's what I always wanted to do and I'm happy to be doing it. I find it fun and challenging and all the rest, though I'll never get an island out of it. If that makes me a low-paid defeatist who doesn't believe anyone can earn over £50k (apart from most people senior to me, of course) so be it. That's what I'm 'going out to do', and I think it's silly and reductive to say if you're not earning massive amounts of money, you're a drone or a trucker or whatever.

I mean, who are the people who like to say nobody can earn over £50 k a year, not who are the bedsit people with the pharmacies.

who are the bedsit people with the pharmacies? :o I will ask my Mum Xenia, she works for Boots as a dispenser

My main point wasn't to do with motivation at all, it was that many top professionals do not earn over 100k. You may know lots of people who do earn that - I do too - but Xenia makes it sound like you pop to the corner shop, acquire some excellent qualifications, work hard and bang, you can earn 100k plus and send your 6 children to private school. My point is that many, many hard-working, highly-educated and highly-motivated professionals in well-paid professions do not earn 100k. If you are a doctor who refuses to do private practice, for instance. Or a lawyer who does legal aid work.

But they are out there and they are on mumsnet - women earning a lot.

I did not say it is easy. In fact it is as important I am robust, never ill and very positive and work harder than most people I know that means I did well as qualifications. You need a mix of different qualities.

@nit I've known some bedsit people (or rather, former bedsit people) but they didn't end up owning pharmacies or indeed haulage companies. Dismissing people who do lower paid jobs as 'drones' is indeed silly but no more silly than saying anyone who earns more than you is primarily motivated by money or referring to 'the greasy pole' in a sneery way when talking about any job you aren't qualified to do. I know you have not done that, but others have.

oh thinly veiled insults

It was a subsidiary point at best. Of course there aren't huge numbers earning that, otherwise there wouldn't be the 2% and 1% thing. Just because there aren't huge numbers of us earning those amounts it doesn't make it any less wrong to say you have to be motivated by money to be earning that amount. You don't have to. You are wrong.

I didn't actually say that, I said some people are not motivated by money and they aren't. I acknowledge that people in higher positions are not all motivated by money but the fact is people on this thread keep discussing salary as if it is an indicator of success and aspiration and of happiness and of choice. Some people simply are not bothered about earning huge amounts, though again i acknowledge that if you are poor you want and need to be earning more, but again it's a bit more complex than saying they need to live in a bedsit/work harder/have higher ambition. Some people unfortunately are not capable of anything more than they are doing, but you know if they go to work, have happiness, have a family and whatever else makes them happy, it's not mine or anyone else's place to judge their success compared to someone else. It is harder for people with complex home lives and poverty to get to higher positions quickly and it will be even harder now they have increased university fees

The bedsits was not saying they start in one - it was a point about the sacrifices people make to own their own pharmacy or whatever their aim is or they sleep on a friend's floor to save rent for a year or whatever. Some people get their first job and spend spend spend and some invest in a business.