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.

That OP could have worded her post better, and posted somewhere
else other than AIBU but this is exactly what this thread is about.
There's no rule that says MN is only for 'the poor'. So there's no room to read.
Those who have something valuable to say, click and contribute.
Those who don't, stay off. Hide the thread if it upsets you.
What benefit do you get from kicking the OP's who are 'well-off'?

@JimmyGrimble

Plaguing our society? Nope.
what plagues our society is massive inequality. If you can’t see that your massive sense of entitlement is getting in the way.
Why are some people doing well? Luck, accident of birth … Most people work hard, most people make sacrifices, everyone loves their children.

What @JimmyGrimble said.

Is Mumsnet not open to people like the person asking about the reasonableness of their salary? Why should she not feel free to ask the question she did? Anyone who feels it’s insulting to them because they are less well-off can choose to ignore and can also choose not to be sensitive about something that is not this person’s fault. Expecting that poster to hide away is completely unfair.

I think it’s fine to ask. You just have to accept that others may be fucked off. Better still, acknowledge the privilege that likely got you there. But it’s fine to ask others in your field what the going rate is.

Explain the accident of birth please versus life choices. So the majority of those deemed to be doing well is not because of anything they did?

Success is relative. Would you say your success is an accident of your birth? I’m pretty sure there are lots of people that you are doing better then.

I do think with that OP her question was very open to interpretation. Not surprising she got those responses.
If she had said something like 'solicitor in Z location doing Y job - am I being underpaid?' the responses would have been different.
But she went the 'am I greedy for wanting more' route...

What is the privilege that got the poster in question to where she is?

I don’t know. I said ‘likely’, in line with my first post. You

Assuming that 'poor' mumsnetters being annoyed by what might be perceived as 'luxury problems' is 'a culture of envy' is not intelligent, even if those wealthier people's questions are valid. I'm not saying they aren't. People finding those types of problems 'luxury' is perennial. It will always happen. But in a cost of living crisis it's BOUND to happen A LOT. Just accept it and shrug rather than castigate people who may be in desperate straits.

Well by that logic NOBODY on MN can complain about anything at all. We're all lucky to be living in a developed country with access to clean water, a sewage system,.. need I go on?

Definitely, if someone is dismissing others as not working hard on a thread blah2 ask them to check their privilege. But again - nuance. A lot of the 'work hard' is probably because anytime somebody dares to say that they pulled themselves up they are instantly shouted down by everyone else.

Janet saying she 'worked hard' does not mean that 'teachers and nurses' don't. Maybe she spent her twenties climbing the career ladder, while everyone else was off on holiday or constant nights out. Maybe she took some risks, went above and beyond, while others did their 9-5 and that's it. There are a whole lot of jobs that exist, and not everybody 'works hard'.

It’s all a bit like not understanding White Privilege. Success, when coming from a base of comfort, family money and easier access to things to aid education, be it private school, tutors, paid uni fees, not needing to work thru uni, learning to drive paid for, first car, first insurance, house deposits….

Unless you have not experienced life without these seemingly minor elements, you have no comprehension of what it is like without them. Success of the capitalist kind is rarely won through hard work alone. Yes, there are obviously cases of it, but the vast majority are backed and often bankrolled by family money in some way. And those before them, and so on.

sometimes, when you’re not in that demographic it isn’t that the doors are closed. The doors aren’t there. The club doesn’t even know it’s a club. As well as it being so terribly demoralising to have to claw your way to even modest ‘success’, it is very galling when lack of this ‘success’ is blamed on lack of hard work, or determination, or ambition.

Call it envy, call it whatever makes it ok for you. But do not believe that the accident of birth is not at the root of most of these ‘successes’.

You are not wrong OP. Success is frowned upon and it’s a race to the bottom. People wear stupidity as a badge of honour, and brag about it as though it’s a substitute for humility. Like ‘I was never very good at school’. Or making statements showing reverse snobbery. Anyone with money is greedy and all benefits claimants are salt of the Earth that can do no wrong.

Unfortunately it’s a general part of the terminal decline of this country.

Ok so…
Parents using private schools are doing it for charitable reasons, doing us all a favour and not for self interest? Pull the other one. Bit hypocritical to criticise state school parents for trying to get the best for their kids!
I have never said that higher tax payers are to blame for underpaid nurses and hungry children. That would be simplistic and wrong. What I do blame a certain kind of privileged person for is their attitudes. The attitude that everyone worse off is ‘lazy’ or ‘lacks ambition’. That they have what they have through ‘hard work’ and ‘sacrifice’. That people struggling to feed their families are somehow deficient because of their ‘poor choices’. This is what I find unforgivable. They’ve already won the life lottery. Why shit on everyone else? And yes - denouncing people pointing this out as ‘envious’ is part of it.

Are you saying that people from working class backgrounds do not ever work their way up to middle class? I’m pretty sure I’ve read countless threads on here of that.

Success is certainly relative. So what do you say of yourself relative to someone less well-off than you? You think everyone who is more successful than you have achieved that success, not of their own accord, but because of privilege? Presumably that includes their parents who chose to invest, financially and non-financially, in their children?

Excellent post.

The parents who send their kids to private school or pay for private healthcare; where do they get the money from? Do they take it from your pocket? Is it not their money to do as they see fit, including to benefit their offspring? Do they not pay tax and contribute to supporting those less well-off?

What do you want from these parents? To shut up and disappear? To not be successful in order to make you feel better?

What would make you happy? That we all earn the same, drive the same cars, live in identical houses?

I can speak for myself and my success is certainly not an accident by birth. Foreign, female, woman of colour from a developing country and from a poor family. I’m by no means unique. I know countless people from working class backgrounds doing extremely well.

Are you saying that people from working class backgrounds do not ever work their way up to middle class? I’m pretty sure I’ve read countless threads on here of that.

Social mobility is at an all-time low.

Quality of life is slumping in general compared to previous generations, across all social strata.

How do you ‘invest’ in your children when Mum is a single mum just about making rent, and working 2 jobs to survive?

Theres this attitude that there’s a choice to ‘invest’ in education etc. newsflash: WE DON’T HAVE SAVINGS! We don’t have spare, there’s no sacrifices to be made (and why do those not born into money have to ‘sacrifice’). Teachers already go the extra bloody 90 miles, do you have any idea of the work they do outside classroom hours? NHS workers/emergency services work many unpaid hours - what are we doing wrong? Should we not sleep?

If it earned success I will always applaud it, but so, so much success is actually propped up and enabled by family money, and these people then accuse those without this leg up of just ‘not working hard enough’. That’s a shitty attitude.

There you go.
There will always be exceptions and a few underprivileged children who get a break and are able to use their gifts and work their way into an easier life. Good for them. What I would like, what would make me happy, is for them not to be the exception. It’s a bit rich of you to say that I want people to ‘shut up and disappear’ when you disparage those who criticise the system as being envious. Such hypocrisy. Poor you.

You think most ordinary people achieve unearned success?

Whatever lees-than position you find yourself in, it’s not the fault of your neighbour who has more-than. So why be angry at them and desire to see them become less than they are?

What does your neighbour’s success take away from you?

Yes, imo there is.

Mumsnet has a diverse user base, and it’s not just those in a less fortunate financial position that are entitled to make threads, or indeed complain. I don’t understand coming onto a thread that doesn’t apply to you, and ranting because it’s not about you (‘read the room’, as if there’s any one room), as if everything has to be.

If you’re genuinely disinterested in a topic then don’t engage 🤷🏻‍♀️

I do sometimes wonder how this pans out inter-generationally.

At what point does the person who does succeed from a disadvantaged background need to begin regarding themself as privileged?

Second-generation British Asian immigrants (some of whom are doctors, dentists and solicitors, but whose parents arrived in the UK in the 1970s) are probably a case in point.