To think people are respected more if they are rich?

[TheFaultInOurStars]

Ive been in email correspondence with someone over a formal matter. I haven't met the person in RL. She gave me her address for posting something and I googled it to see where she lived. (Yes, I am nosy!)
It happened to be in a mahoosive house with a stunning garden in an affluent area which she paid three quarters of a million pounds for. She's also married to a doctor.

But now my perception of her has changed. In an instant. I suddenly thought shes more educated than me, she's more clever than me, shes better than me. I feel beneath her whereas before I didn't think anything of her really.

Am I right in thinking that people give you just that little bit more respect if you're rich, you're just that little bit more important?

zoemaguire having parents who set you up with social/cultural capital, not suffering ill-health or caring responsibilities

I wish some people would think before they post. My parents died when I was young and I had to spend many Christmasses working while paying my way through uni (albeit without tuition fees). They also left me nothing, having suffered years of ill health before dieing. DH's parents are still alive and as mean as sin in terms of the concept of financial help (not that we want/need it).

Sheer hard graft, including climbing the career ladder and eventually getting to reasonably well paid jobs. We bought our first washing machine on finance and made up our deposit on our first home from a bank loan (on top of our mortgage) which we told the bank was to buy a car.

But I really wish I had another Christmas to spend with my mum, despite the fact she gave me absolutely no financial help whatsoever.

Aw, chandler I am sorry you never got much time with your parents. Having spent the day surrounded by my family and parents (and bursting with Turkey!) I am feeling very thankful my parents are still here and healthy. No amount of money could compensate for their loss.

We haven't any financial help from parents, and they have offered a cheque for £100,000 today towards our house build, which we've politely declined. They worked really really hard to raise us and deserve to spend it themselves. I truly hope no one respects them because they are well off, but rather because they are wonderful generous people.

People respect rich people more, sadly.

If you're not British (even if still native English speaker in my case), it can be even more stark as people can't "place" you if you're not into designer gear, botox etc. When my dc started school, they had no playdates until one brave mum came around. Then we had an avalanche of invites, as we were deemed "one of them".

In my own experience, nicely rich people (up to single digit millions) are as lovely as the rest of society. But the seriously rich live another life and can be hard and demanding.

zoemaguire

Gosh you have a chip somewhere. Or been on the sherry- maybe Christmas isnt a good tim to debate this

Not that it matters but 28 years of card carrying labour. Born in council house which my parents lived in all the time I was at home. My grandparents were economic migrants and arrived penniless into England (now thats a hot topic)- both died young from very avoidable illness linked to poverty. 1st in my family to go to Uni etc etc. I did get a small grant but worked 20 hours a week while at Uni (as did OH). OH family never gave him a penny at Uni although they were meant to.

And yes I wouldnt earn so much if I didnt work so much as my income is directly linked to hours worked. I could work half as long and earn half as much. It is my choice. As I said- well off but not rich.

clara, I would not bother arguing over it. Many women seem to resent other women who have worked much harder than they have and earn more. I don't know why as money is not the thing that determines if we are happy. If you're paying a lot of school fees, have a massive London mortgage because you have to live near work and pay for full time childcare for the youngest:

£180k is just over £100k after tax. So mortgage of £50k, childcare £30k, school fees £30k etc That doesn't even leaves money for food BUT of course all those things are choices and instead we could all live in the house my mother was brought up in which costs about £40k today in the NE and not send chidlren to private schools etc. All relative.

What is important is that anyone who is in a warm house with food today realises not everyone on the planet has the luxury of that and that if you have that plus you are with people you love rather than who abuse, hit or hurt you and your children you and you are not ill either physically or mentally you are very rich indeed in the only senses that matter.

good post flower. it isn't always about choice though. id like to have the choice to educate my dd privately and have a big house etc. i just don't. despite being highly qualified and a hard worker - my life just did not turn out that way. do i resent or envy you because you do? absolutely not . i respect you just as much as i respect the single mother struggling to balance childcare and battling with a dodgy landlord.

i often think its the "not quite theres" who look down their noses at others. so they are comfortably off. naice house. ok car. couple of holidays but mortgaged to the hilt in order to maintain their "lifestyles" that look down their noses at those with less than them and pander to those with more.

ive friends and acquaintances in many social strata and ive seen alot of this. ive seen a lot of inverse snobbery too. ironically its the really well off professionals and the poorest of my friends who seem comfortable in their own skins not to care one jot whether someone drives a jag ot jalopy.

Actually clara said 180k after tax.

I specifically said cultural and social capital from parents - not financial. Im sorry to hear about your parents chandler. I did think very carefully about how i posted though. Cultural and social capital is all the NON-financial advantages your parents give you that enable you to be a success in life. Not everybody has that, of course. But most successful people have some reasons why they are successful beyond just hard graft. Loads of people work hard!

I don't have any chip on my shoulder. I don't resent anybody. The whole point of my post was to say that I feel very well off. I worked bloody hard and got three degrees. I'm also the first in my family to go to uni. Like I said, we saved hard and went without for years in order to get to our current position. But i'm still grateful for the things that contributed to my success that i had no control over. I went to uni in the days of grants. And without paying 10k a year tuition. I call that lucky. I've had no money off my parents but an awful lot else that contributed to my success, as do many children of immigrants. They read to me, told me education was important, showed me what grit and determination looked like. And the world I graduated into 20 years ago gave me choices that today's 21yos don't have, however hard working.

And fundamentally, given the income distribution of the UK, I still think that if you think 180k post tax income is not rich, there is something wrong with your perspective.

But it's true that I'm in a hideous mood after Xmas at in-laws, so I'm certainly grumpy as hell

It was £180k post tax income. I live in zone 2 London with a hefty mortgage and definitely do not begrudge successful women. I would like to think once I have established my career in it's fullest then I will hopefully be one of those women. Also this she worked harder to get where she is etc etc is bollocks - opportunities are given to middle class people which others do not have. Doesn't mean they don't work as hard to keep a roof over their heads.

I get that it's all relative but like I said previously it's a parallel universe. In my universe that is rich.

I am well off thanks to an inheritance. We haven't changed our lifestyle- DH still works, we still live in the same house and drive the same cars, I still wear the same cheap clothes etc. The only change we have made is that DS is now educated privately. I have found that when people find this out (and people come right out and ask how we can afford it!) it polarises them and lots of assumptions are made. Some people I thought were friends now avoid me because they seem to think I think we're better than them and some people who weren't friendly to me before, actively seem to want to be friends with me now.

I find it fascinating yet depressing at the same time.

Zoemaguire

Rich (in financial terms!) in my and i think most people's mind means having enough money to live very comfortably indeed if you so desire - pay a mortgage for a lovely house in a good area

That is not rich in my mind. Rich is owning property, not paying a mortgage on the home you live in. Rich is when it wouldn't matter if you suddenly became ill or disabled and lost your £180k pa job, because you have enough in the bank that your usual financial needs can be met.

That is financially secure, surely - not the same at all. You can be that whether you are rich or poor. My granny was financially secure, in that she had no mortgage on her little flat, and her pension covered her meagre outgoings. She sure as hell wasn't rich!

You're right, financially secure is not the same thing, so it's not relevant. IMO you aren't rich if you don't own at least one property.

We have a high income as well as savings and assetts, however I would say that we are very well off, but not rich. To me rich is private education, private travel, large London property. Rich means being able to spend without thinking, we -are very careful with money because do many people rely on us.

That does not mean that I do not acknowledge that we are incredibly lucky. I would also never claim that we work harder or deserve our money more than anyone else.

Zoemaguire I specifically said cultural and social capital from parents - not financial. Im sorry to hear about your parents chandler. I did think very carefully about how i posted though. Cultural and social capital is all the NON-financial advantages your parents give you that enable you to be a success in life. Not everybody has that, of course. But most successful people have some reasons why they are successful beyond just hard graft. Loads of people work hard!

I don't think you actually live in the real world. I would love to know what "cultural and social capital you think" I got from a father who died when I was 12. Again, like clara, I was the first in my family to go to university. No big deal, I was clever at school and worked hard. I went to such a rough school, it really did drive home to me from an early age the difference between working hard and going out to hang around the streets every night instead of studying, or to spend the lesson kicking the desk of the student in front of you and throwing bits of wet paper at them. Studying for exams is a skill much denigrated, its not particularly pleasant, but its what tends to set apart the haves from the have nots, or in the twentieth century, its what has enabled hard working women to earn on a par with men in some fields which do not depend on manual labour.

I'm not unusual in coming from such a background, which I don't consider particularly bad - I'm a solicitor, and my profession is full of senior partners from non-private school, similar backgrounds - but to hear them speak, you would assume they were privately educated. I do read an awful lot of tosh on here and one of the things I have read is that its impossible to get into the legal profession without family connections or private schooling. That would have eliminated I think 85% of my degree year. People really do write the most awful rubbish on here.

What you actually have to do to progress in that sort of way is leave your "cultural and social background", as you describe it, and forget what it has taught you, and fit in to an entirely new demographic.

In London, a salary of say £120k pa before tax for a solicitor would be average - its what a decent solicitor would expect as a reasonable reward for working in a difficult unpleasant field that is very selective. It certainly wouldn't make you rich and you would work the hours for it, including weekends and evenings, either in the office or taking it home. Most people do it for a few years then go onto something else or burn out.

As I say zoemaguire, I don't think you really live in the real world. You sound very sheltered, and my guess would be that is because you have stayed close to your parents all your life, with the security that brings.

I don';t think there's much point in trying to define "rich" (for me it's no one being ill or mentally unwell and there being love in people's lives and I write that as a woman who does earn quite a lot by most standards).

Nor do I think the only thing that means I earn a lot is I have worked harder than most women. It is also a mixture of things - mental strength to keep going, stoicism, endurance, tolerance of the deficiencies of others at work, ability to make people like you and garner clients, I am reasonably good looking which has never hindered me, I am never ill and the children just about never are, feminism (if your family is a long line of feminists then women tend to earn more money and have the fairness at home which makes that possible) , luck, picking work which is not paid at £6 an hour but substantially more and picking that at a life stage when it is easier (i.e. teenager not choosing that at 40 when it's harder).

Some women do it the easier way - marry a man who earns or has a lot of money. It is his money. They can live with that.

I have never found people keener to be with me more than when we were buying the first baby's clothes in jumble sales 30 years ago but that is likely to be as much because I like my own company as anything else. I certainly could have a lunch or dinner out paid for by someone else almost every day of the year if I chose as people seem to think if they offer to pay so they can pick my brains for work purposes I will see that as some kind of massive treat. As you'd have to pay me to spend 2 hours with most of those people and 2 hours alone is more desirable and I can afford my own food I do not take them up on their offers. It's a shame that those who need food are least likely to be offered free lunches and those who don't want or need them are offered them all the time.

Whatever you earn or your husband earns treating everyone well particularly those with very little money is terribly important. I remember how my parents were who both worked incredibly hard to pay school fees for us. I made friends with just about the least well off person in the year rather than Lady XX etc in the class (of which we only had one or two). That was fine with them because for them people whether black white female male Jewish Sikh or whatever are all to be treated with respect. I hope I have passed those values to the children.

There are a few downsides - as soon as anyone sees this house (zone 5 - never been able to afford zone 2 by the way despite what I earn or perhaps that's just because I prefer a house to a flat and want to pay school fees) they double the price of any estimate for works as they think you are risk rather than someone in a large house who could have a massive mortgage and no savings.

Happy Boxing. I am about to start work for the day. Lots of women work very hard. I still think I work harder than many and that is one reason I earn more.

I think some posters are confusing being well paid for working hard with being rich.

I've had this attitude sometimes and I find it very sexist. ie a man in a manual labour type job, like plumbing, or coal mining (not many left!) is considered much harder working than a woman in a well paid job that requires rare qualifications, hard work, dedication over years, etc..

So in answer to the OP, I would say no. As this thread clearly demonstrates, people think you are rich if you simply earn well for work done, and you don't actually get paid well because of skills you have, but because of your parents giving you some vague advantage in life, or a tax fiddle or inheritance.

And I don't think you are reading my posts properly chandler. Did you see the bit where I said I was also the first in my family to go to uni, and have had no financial help from parents at any point? Also, social and cultural capital doesn't mean what you think it means.

Where did I say you didn't get paid well for your skills? I'm amazed that there are people so right wing out there that they genuinely think it is a controversial opinion to suggest that social structures have an impact on success in life. It's hardly Bolshevism!

Arf at the idea that you guys are the ones on 100k+ salaries saying you really are not rich, but I am the sheltered one not living in the real world!

Law is not socially biased in any way, of course. Meanwhile, back in the real world that most of us live in, see for example this:

www.legalcheek.com/2014/11/stats-show-firms-and-chambers-target-small-pool-of-privately-educated-recruits/

Further evidence has emerged suggesting top law firms and chambers specifically target a narrow group of privately educated students for recruitment.

Recently released statistics show that while fewer than 9% of those applying for law degrees are privately educated, nearly 35% of associates at some City law firms did not attend state schools, while that figure for some chambers reaches more than 40%.

The data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency was reported yesterday. It shows that law as a degree subject is far more popular with state-educated students than might be assumed.

However, Legal Cheek research shows that top law firms are populated by a far higher percentage of privately educated lawyers than is the case of those reading law.

Of the firms responding to this year’s Legal Cheek socio-economic diversity survey, magic circle giant Linklaters reported that 34% of its associates were privately educated, while Anglo-Australian firm Herbert Smith Freehills reported that 30% of its associates were from that education demographic.

The partnerships at those firms were even more private school-orientated, with 44% at Herbies and 41% at Links. Note, however, that Linklaters has since published dramatically altered new statistics in which the firm’s percentage of privately educated lawyers has — bizarrely — roughly halved since 2013

Other firms responding to the Legal Cheek survey had lower proportions of privately educated lawyers, but they were still at least double that of the percentage of law degree students.

For example, Addleshaw Goddard reported that 16% of its associates (and 25% of partners) came from private schools. Those figures for the London office of US firm Squire Patton Boggs were 17% and 15%, respectively.

I'm a barrister and it is certainly the case that a high proportion of my colleagues, even in an area of law and a chambers that are considered pretty left wing, were privately educated. I went to a comp and I work for my (significant) income. I think people find the word "rich" difficult - I would imagine very few people think of themselves as rich - but I am definitely rich compared to e.g. my best friend from home. I don't really understand a definition of rich that excludes people who work for their income. I think I'd call that independently wealthy or something.

In response to the original question though, I like to think that my perception of people doesn't change simply because I discover they're well off, but I'm sure I am affected to some degree. I am not sure I would respect them more though. I think my residual chippiness probably means I would respect them less if anything, but I recognise that is unreasonable and try to fight against the tendency.

20% of teenagers in London go to private schools so if that leads to 34% of law firm partners being from private schools that is not a huge discrepancy.
on the law entry by the way there are many many many more lawyers who are black and jewish than there are in the general population so you could equally say law unfairly gives jobs to black and jewish candidates over white women. However that is not pro black/Jewish bias by recruiters. It is that certain communities, many Indian, jewish, black etc think law is one of the best careers so disproportionate numbers apply from those groups.

On the private school recruitment and law - your university counts. So my daughter went to Bristol but not to do law (she did law after). Had she read law it might have been harder to get into that university and yet in terms of recruitment the institution counts over the subject. So perhaps state school pupils are not as well able to use a mouse and the internet to check those facts and if someone is not bright enough to do that then the law is well clear of them. That last thing we want is people who are not very clever becoming doctors and surgeons. Ditto as regards exam results. Plenty of comprehensive pupils get to Oxbridge - 50%+ so we not instead want to encourage those with CCC from an ex poly into jobs which require top brains.

Many of the children at private schools are not really from very rich families. My son is out today with his Muslim school friend whose parents have no jobs and whose uncle seems to keep the family from one ice cream parlour and I presume the boy has a bursary. I also sent my son out with enough money discreetly to pay for them both if the boy hasn't got much money on him. It would be really unfair to say that that family is privileged and rich and if their son becomes a lawyer having gone to that private school that proves the system is defective. Instead as a right wing libertarian I would say that shows the system works - that if you pool family money to buy a private school place or move near a state grammar or work ultra hard you can do well. it's brilliant we live in a country with that kind of opportunity. We are very lucky. The fact most people are not prepared to work particularly hard is up to them but they reap the lack of rewards by so doing unless they are sexy enough to marry a rich man who keeps them.

Also to be fair to law it is one of the few professions where we have paid internships for students. In that sense we are better than all the rest at seeking out the brilliant from wherever they come.

I don't mind i f people call me rich. I am rich because I am well and have a not of children whom I love and I know I earn more than most people. UK benefits claimants are "rich" compared with African immigrants from war torn Africa - a UK council flat with free money is heaven on earth compared to where from whence they've come. It is all relative.

Generally as people earn more they buy a better house, take on a bigger mortgage and take for granted things they never used to. Hopefully most of us remember the poverty of our origins. I certainly remember cycling because the tube was too expensive, never eating out (not that I eat out much now) and going round church jumble sales to buy the baby clothes,. I don't think that did us any harm at all and you need a capacity in life to put yourself into the shoes of others. I hope I h ave managed to pass that on to the children too and I think I have. I want them to have humility and understanding of others.

As I am working today I had better get back to it and I am happy to do so.If you find work you adore as I have then you are indeed very lucky.

What I don't think is fair is single parents on £50k being told they are rich when in fact their net income after mortgage, childcare and tax/NI is very similar to a couple on £25k once benefits are added in, tax credits etc. There is a misconception on mumsnet that your £50k single parent is much better off than a couple with housewife/husband on £25k whereas in fact the single mother because of how our benefits system works with the lower paid is not better off. However of course I accept even in London that someone on £100k and £180k is much better off in terms of money than most.

Flowerfairy but the proportion of public school children nationally is 7%, not 20%. Unless you are arguing that you can only be employed by a magic circle firm if you grew up in London?!

If she was the doctor, I might have a little bit more respect, but I have two in the family (one being my little brother :) ), and I have a PhD myself, so unless I found out that this person had actually done something that I admired, it wouldn't change my perceptions, no.

I don't think it's 7% if you look at sixth formers though. From memory it is nearer 20% in general once you vet to sixth form level and yes if you are not from London you may be less likely to work in London firms. (Although some of us m9oved hundreds of miles from London with a trailing male spouse for our work in London - not all women are prepared to move miles from London and move their husband's career for their work so those who are obviously benefit).

I'm not saying be complacent. If you want the best candidates then you don't exclude all women or all white or whatever it might be. That is why most law firms and good employers do try to recruit reasonably widely although of course only those who actually can pass exams which excludes rightly 50% of UK children who cannot get5 decent GCSEs never mind A levels (we forget).

It is a fascinating subject. Tehre is also a large number of judges who went to state grammar schools same with oxbridge entrants. Some Comps have a huge Oxbridge monopoly - hills road comp in Cambridge is an example. All we can do is find out what works in those good schools and force other state schools to copy them eg it might be single sex, it might be working very hard (surprise surprise), taking very difficult subjects which involve hours of work which your average lazy teenage has no stomach for), it might involve hours of practice and elocution lessons so clients can actually understand what you say. It might involve learning how to spell and even Heaven forfend use the subjunctive tense. It might involve actually looking at what people wear in that job and what weight they are and copying that. Now we have the internet it is much easier to do this. one of my children recently got a new job after three interviews. She spent ages looking at what we needed, watching youtube videos people at the company have made, assessing psychologically what sort of people are there, what they would want to hear an interview, obviously researching the business area, looking at linked in profiles. Students today are so lucky these free tools are available if they have internet access and are prepared to put in hours of research time rather than going out drinking.

My immigrant cleaner's son is doing the LPC and my son is a postman. I think that's a brilliant illustration of opportunity and social mobility up and down in the UK which presents why we are indeed Great Britain. Although God knows why his school sent him to an ex poly or perhaps that was due to lack of work and useless A level results but it's not going to help him.

Hello rich person who has named changed again but still remains very obvious!