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.

Nothing @BrighteyesBonnie , not until it is suggested that it is down to me ‘not working hard enough’. People working 3 minimum wage jobs work bloody hard. Due to their circumstances they are unlikely to better their position. Not impossible, but unlikely.

I don’t envy you your how every many figure income. I resent you telling me I don’t have the same because I am somehow less. And I abhor a world that is not only fine with obscene excess, but at the same time is fine with extreme poverty.

@JimmyGrimble the message on MN is very clear and was unmistakable in the thread opened by the solicitor asking about her salary. It was one of “shut up”.

Describing this attitude as one of envy is absolutely not the same as saying “shut up”. It’s merely asking why is there a need to reach for the throats of people perceived to be doing better. I posit that it is evidence of a growing culture of envy.

Who said you are not working hard? For instance, the OP who asked about her salary, never once said anything about how hard anyone else works.

Do people you perceive to better off than you often give opinions on how hard you work?

And I certainly did not say you are less than or should even consider yourself less than. That’s your narrative and your imaginations not mine.

It’s in your OP.
ambition and doing well do not seem to be appreciated

You are reading into this what you want. It’s for you to wrestle with why you read this as saying you are less than or you do not work hard.

I know I’m not less thanks and I am well aware of how hard I work!

@BrighteyesBonnie i haven’t said ‘you’. The same as your op isn’t about me. The themes I highlight are those most often touted when someone raises issue with inequality - ‘but I worked hard’ ‘we invested in our child’s education’ ‘we prioritised’.

These attitudes are in this thread. There are people out there who don’t work hard, who don’t aspire, who don’t plan. There are a huge number more who DO everything right, but the hill is a vertical wall without footholds when you don’t have that familial buffer.

Will my kids hopefully get a teeny bit better step up than me and DH? We are doing our utmost (2 ex military and now police) to make sure they do? Will they take that for granted? I hope not, because currently they have a huge amount of compassion for those from different backgrounds and recognise fate has the biggest bearing on how life pans out.

That humility is what those who say ‘but I worked hard’ lack.

Okay, understood and I don’t disagree.

Do you actually think social
mobility is lower now than in any other given century?

'Inequality breeds envy' shocker for OP.

Also, another shock revelation: hard work often pays very little.

People are not rewarded for according to how hard they work. It is ridiculous to say that a wealthy tech entrepreneur is working harder than a single mum with two jobs and three side hustles to cover the cost of uniform and school trips at state school. Her work is valued less, but the effort expended is equal or greater.

It is entirely reasonable to be angry and envious, when you see people who do very little drowning in money while you struggle.

Without a 'culture if envy', the vast majority of us would still be living in a medieval peasant class while the nobility thrived. Envy can inspire changes that raise living standards for all.

It’s likely there will be more envy when many people find they have not enough to live on, and even more have nothing that what they had in previous years.

I don’t know about envy. There can be quite a lot of entitlement - an amazing number of people on MN believe they are ‘working their arse off’ etc. Or they come into threads like the lawyer one, announce they’re in a non-comparable profession (much much easier to get into and qualify, for example) and complain they’re not paid the same.

I am talking about times within living memory. For people alive now, living generations of families who are navigating the world today.

Research into inequality within societies suggests that as inequality rises, neither the poor, nor the well off thrive. Crime levels increase and people at all levels get defensive.

So the reality is that inequality increases envy. The fault lies with governments and those in power who allow inequality to increase.

I presume, OP, that you have a lot of empathy for Marie Antoinette and her “Let them eat cake” because the lack of tact is not dissimilar. Anyone reading Mumsnet widely will know there are many people here struggling to feed their children. Feeling hard done by on £62,000 and mentioning it in front of those people is pretty tactless, don’t you think?

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2022/apr/17/rich-countries-that-let-inequality-run-rampant-make-citizens-unhappy

My profession is harder to get into than law. Many in my profession will never earn £62,000 and certainly not after the very short time that lawyer mentioned. The responses were predictable and anyone who thinks otherwise must be equally divorced from the reality of what life is like for 95% of people.

There’s an awful lot of entitlement on here when it comes to benefits. They seem to be seen as a bottomless pit of cash that can be dipped into because you don’t fancy working full time, or because you want a change of job, or you’re going through a divorce, or have made crappy financial decisions. You see it all the time - poster announces they’re leaving their husband and rather than encourage them to find their own job and independence, it’s all ‘See what benefits you are entitled to’, ‘Can you put in a UC claim’ ‘Don’t worry UC will pay your rent’.

Simultaneously the high earners who are paying for others to have those benefits are routinely mocked and accused of being ‘out of touch’.

To me there’s nothing more ‘out of touch’ than expecting free money because you want to pick your kids up from school and don’t want to work more than 15 hours a week.

Yes and it is annoying. The lawyer post received ridiculous responses. Bring a teacher with 30 odd years experience and getting paid less and using that to justify why the op should have been happy with their wage was a really daft argument and that's just an example. There were lots of similar posters on there. Some jobs do pay more. I appreciate not everyone can retrain or up sticks as iften suggested. It isn't a race to the bottom though and on that posts the op did find out that other people in the same area of law were being paid more.

It seems that you can't post much on muumsnet without being told to read the room So if you post about a buying a property dilemma then the responses are along the lines of at least you can afford too, I'll be in my 1 bed flat forever and that people rely on the bank of mum and dad to buy homes (some do but many of us have made sacrifices and been able to do it on our own). You end up with no real advice just a pile on by people who perceive themselves as more hard done by. It's easy enough to ignore posts that you can't relate to or have no interest in.

It’s not a culture of envy it’s a culture of inequality. The fact that there is such huge gap between the highest earner in any company/business/school/hospital and the lowest earner. That’s the issue. If the gap were not so big then envy wouldn’t be an issue.

The use of the word envy stokes up negativity.

It’s always been the rich vs the poor. The rich pay the tax that subsidises the poor. You can live off the tax rich people pay and never work a day in your life. Should you take more from the rich, make their lives a little less comfortable so those with less can have a bit more? That makes sense. Maybe level they playing field. But what happens when the wealthy stop working? Should I spend god knows how many years at school to become a Dr/lawyer/accountant, spend a fortune in uni fees and have incredibly expensive insurance in case I get sued if I am not going to make a butt ton of money? I would rather be a butcher/baker/candlestick maker and work better hours if I am going to make the same. Maybe you can go to the butcher for medical advice instead when there aren’t any drs. You just spent how much money so a pompous old git can parade around in dress ups? It might stimulate the economy, so rich business owners make more money and pay more tax. Will that tax add up to as much as was spent on weddings, funerals and a coronation? That money could have gone directly in to the NHS or schools. You choose to give a family of multi millionaires more money, but someone who has worked hard to achieve something is demonised for having more money than someone else. It isn’t fair, it’s incredibly shit for some of the population through no fault of their own. But there isn’t a solution that will solve the problems. In Australia we have a rental crisis similar to you, the government has just let the council houses go to shit because they are continuously being trashed. If anyone actually has a solution that would work I would be happy to hear it.

And who are you blaming for this or targeting your anger at? Your neighbour who is doing better than you financially? A mumsnet poster who asked about the fairness of their salary? Parents who send their kids to private school?

How do you solve this inequality? By dragging those doing better back down to the level regarded as the right level to be at or is it about making things better for those less well-off?

Will making it more difficult and more expensive for some parents to send their kids to private school (ie squashing their ambition) make it better for you?

Wanting high earners to earn less isn’t going to help you. Rather wanting those less well-off to earn more is

It's not that, just that people are feeling poorer & getting more fed up of the inequality. Rather than blaming the gov we are encouraged to be annoyed at others eg immigrants, people earning more etc.

There is a huge issue with inequality though.

@BrighteyesBonnie how do you suggest we get the lower earners to get better pay then? Or balance the tax burden between those on Paye & those who aren't?

@ThatOnePlease who said anything like this “People are not rewarded for according to how hard they work. It is ridiculous to say that a wealthy tech entrepreneur is working harder than a single mum with two jobs and three side hustles to cover the cost of uniform and school trips at state school. Her work is valued less, but the effort expended is equal or greater. “?

Some professions pay more than others. There are many economic drivers for that. How lucrative a profession is, isn’t determined by a blunt measure of individual or average physical or mental effort per hour.

In any case, your reasoning seems to be headed in the direction that we should all be paid the same. For how can anyone saying that on average in this or that job or profession a person works harder?

Yes I thought MN would be a fair representation of people but it's so entrenched in victimhood , woke lefty crap it's embarrassing.
Thankfully thread headings give you a topic so you can ignore those to their misery .