Increase in culture of envy

[BrighteyesBonnie]

AIBU to think that the culture of envy has increased significantly in the UK (if Mumsnet is anything to go by)?

For example, a thread by a lawyer asking whether their current salary is fair given their qualifications and years of experience contained a lot of responses angry that the OP is earning more than them and also ridiculing the OP for wanting a better salary.

Another example are threads on private schools, where there is a strong undercurrent of anger at those who are sending or want to send their children to private schools. Privately educated people are viewed with harsh lenses and often insulted.

Ambition and doing well do not appear to be appreciated if you’re doing better than the average.

As inequality increases, anger increases. Remember what happened during the French Revolution?

Women especially are told to 'do what we love'. Not chase the money. Ambition is seen as a dirty word and as seen on previous threads people get called greedy etc for wanting more

women were told that, I don’t think they are any more. I certainly didn’t teach my daughter that and none of her friends mothers told them that either.

but I agree on greed. Someone here is arguing if you want more and you habe more than average, it’s greedy to work to get more. I disagree strongly. I’d never tell my children if you earn more than average stop and don’t work for more, if you do it’s Greed. They should soar as they wish and are able.

I am late fifties. I learned a long time ago that hard work does not equal financial success and that nepotism and family connections make an enormous difference

This.
Half a million people used warm places this winter. I have visited too many friends sitting in freezing houses because they can't afford their fuel bills. For the first time ever I am looking for a second job, on top of caring for a disabled DD, to make ends meet. It is not right.

On eproblem is that people confuse working smarthard with simply working hard

Well, yes, but the problem remains that you are saying 'better jobs' and 'ambition' and meaning 'better paid' and 'trying to get better paid jobs'. That's part of the societal mindset we have that feeds the belief that because a job that pays more money is 'better' and demands 'hard work' and 'ambition' in a way others don't, the person who earns more money is entitled to keep more of it (because, don't you know, they earned it all themselves on their hard work and therefore owe society nothing), therefore we (collectively, electorally) demand lower taxes, therefore have less money available to reward more socially useful jobs properly, and on it goes. And a by-product of this is the intensification of the idea that anyone can overcome systemic disadvantage if they 'try hard enough' and 'aim high', and the holding up of the few people whom a constellation of personality and lucky breaks enabled to overcome that disadvantage as 'this is what you could be if you tried hard enough', which ultimately individualises blame for systemic disadvantage.

Smart hard is bullshit management jargon for non jobs. If a child needs her nappy changing and another child is crying you work hard. If lots of customers are demanding your attention, you work hard. If the factory line moves fast, you work hard.
Work smart just means office workers ignoring management bullshit, and I have done that too.

And I can imagine how perturbing members of certain social strata would find it if, suddenly, vast numbers of underprivileged children were to start overcoming their disadvantage and demanding the Oxbridge places and the 'better jobs'. See the 'what's the point of paying for private education if the state school riff-raff are just going to get the 'contextual' offers' threads.

It suits the way our society is set up for the occasional disadvantaged person to 'do well', because it retains an illusion that meritocracy is the general condition throughout society.

I am angry at inequality. It is not envy, it is anger.
And I won't use a food bank again.I will just steal from rich people,

@BrighteyesBonnie

Have a look at the cartoon in this link - a simple explanation of the privilege enabling someone to be able to train to be a lawyer in the first place .

@ShoesoftheWorld which jobs do you think are rewarded highly that are not socially useful? Can Britain be a first world country without a well-functioning financial service industry or legal service or whatever profession pays an above average salary?

You cannot benchmark all professions based on nurses and teachers. What drives remuneration in various professions are not based on the factors within that profession.

You seem to want a communist system where people should only be allowed to earn and keep a certain level that makes less financially successful people feel good about their lot.

Pulling down rather than pulling up is not the way for a nation to prosper and raise standards and increase opportunities for all.

How do you explain the success of immigrants who face nothing but barriers.

Actually no. This is a problem. Work hard is not just for manual jobs and work smart is not just office management jargon. Obviously otherwise you would be suggesting that manual workers aren't smart.

It's about not just hard working like a donkey but working the way you get future benefits.
Doing extra work at work? Make sure it's recorded somewhere and it's work which can help you move up or sideways in future. Take on opportunities even if they mean extra time or less money. Eg. Friend in warehouses did overtime which paid for x licence, then some other then forklift licence. While he was doing overtimes he got good name at work amongst management so he ended up with better pay without need to even change company. He had to drop overtimes occasionally to actually have time to do the training so had less money temporarily. That's working smart while working hard.

Working smart is to take sideways move to different company if needed not just "well it's same hard work for same money so what's the point". Well point is that company A had no progression, company B has. Smart while working hard. I waitressed in a hotel, moved to another where tips would be smaller so bit less tips but had progression so I made supervise quite quickly.

People get nowhere by just working hard like donkeys. They really need to do something smart alongside it. So when people say I worked hard for it, they mean they worked hard and not just in their particular job position, but around it.

'You seem to want a communist system where people should only be allowed to earn and keep a certain level that makes less financially successful people feel good about their lot.

Pulling down rather than pulling up is not the way for a nation to prosper and raise standards and increase opportunities for all.'

It's fair to say that my politics are somewhat left of centre and that, while I would nevr describe myself as a communist, I think there's merit in 'to each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities'. I'm not interested in 'mak[ing] less financially successful people feel good about their lot', but I do think there is a conversation to be had about whether anyone really needs to earn (or receive in dividends/bonuses/whatever) above a certain (extreme) multiple of the lowest-paid or even the average-waged person in their organisation. And of course we need industries that generate money, but I think it's worth a look at where that money goes. Financial services is probably an example of an industry where the balance of how much of the money generated goes back into a society and how much ends up in individuals' pockets doing little or no social good is out of whack. Then there is the inherent risk that leads to the regular necessity for the whole of society to bail parts of that industry out. Rather higher in financial services than in other industries.

Agreed and also this makes the complaints from teachers and nurses even weirder imo. They need degrees now to qualify too. They could have chosen to study law instead just as easily, lawyers do not have some magic privilege over them for choosing a different course.

So you just mean doing things that lead to promotion or better jobs.
Reputation matters, but so does discrimination. I have seen loads of efficient hard working women not able to progress, while white men soar past on promotions.

For some. Plenty of people with both achieve nothing, and plenty of people with neither achieve lots.

The point is that work is not a meritocracy. More people realise this these days and they are not happy.

Not really the same though, is it?

The Royal Family just take. The Queen didn't even pay income or capital gains tax until she was shamed into it in 1992 and the amount of IHT that the Royal family has avoided on the death of the Queen is mind blowing. Her personal assets should certainly have been taxable

And they steal. Gifts given to the state taken into their own personal collections.

And as a DOI I suppose I should say that my household is pretty much bang on the median income for our household size in a fairly high-tax economy (not the UK) and at a rough guess our tax and social insurance burden is probably about 40% of our gross income. And that's fine because it helps keep this society going.

i imagine that few people are saying those things in response to people we consider ‘principled’, rather we’re saying those things in response to getting pointlessly ranted at by strangers online.

There are things which affect this. Including fact women are much less likely to apply if they don't match 100% job description. And underestimate themselves. It's hard work to get over it but it's possible considering how many women are in management in many places.

What do you mean by inequality? Or, equality? Communism? Because that’s the only approach that will make everyone ‘equal’, financially at least.