Resentment at 100k

[Arseholeneighbours]

Theres a lot of vitriol spilt towards people being “high earners” at 100k and over. As net contributors, and most likely having made sacrifices, stresses and difficult life decisions, there’s many judgements about life choices , expectations and living within one’s means. What is the motivation to push forward in a career and to try and be as successful as one can if there’s no personal gain? It’s all well and good saying those with the broadest shoulders should take on the most - but to what end?

Welfare that we pay for an everyone else gets except us.

Who serves you in the supermarket, cleans your office, delivers your parcels, cares for you when you have an accident?

People on low wages.

Maybe they should stop doing that for you?

What makes you so special that you think you should be on 2.5x more than a very experienced nurse?

Thank god for all these higher earners l sacrificing more than everyone else and working harder than everyone else. If only we all followed that example.

Childcare costs wont last forever and your future opportunities, pension pot that no doubt has been used to lower your tax, and general life stability shits all over lower earners.

So, forgive me if I cant take these "poor successful me" posts seriously. Can't believe I saw a post lamenting soneone on £33k, UC top up, and renting being more secure. What an absolute piss take.

And i say this as someone in a higher tax bracket. I cut my cloth accordingly, try it sometime instead of whinging.

We have a low income but I don't resent high earners and I agree with complaints about the cost of childcare and think it should be universal.

The only things that are frustrating are the assumptions that all low earners get huge sums of benefits. We get child benefit for one child. I have seen posters who have incomes of over £50,000 a year more who resent us for getting it. It is also frustrating when posters take off all their expenses (not talking about tax or student debt but actual bills for clarity) and then say they are only just slightly better off than low earners. We have to pay our mortgage, council tax, water, food bill etc as well!

But you are not working for free. You are still well paid.

It is your choice if you want to send your DC to nursery, or delay promotion till they are in school etc. When DC goes to school, you will be quids in.

The title of your thread is " Resentment at 100K"

And many posters here, inc me, have said it's not resentment for people being paid well, it's that we are not keen on the " Pull your bootstraps up" brigade.

Honestly, I hope you go on and get your promotions, and end up as a research director on half a mil a year.

Is that not your incentive ?

Child care is only for a few years. Can't you just take the hit for a while, like everyone else ?

And for me, I am thinking forward a bit, a thought experiment.

Daily Mirror headline. " Single parent on 110k claims 22k in benefits". !

Apologies by the way for my lack of GBP sign on my posts in your thread. US keyboard and can't remember the code. Ahh wait £. Alt 0163. I really should write down :-)

It's far from ridiculous. Where is the bulk of the tax contributions going to come from if increasingly fewer people won't earn over £100k?

The better system is the tapering off of childcare support after £100k (or whatever arbitrary amount it 'should' be considering fiscal drag), rather than the blunt cut off.

The same reason wealthier people can use state schools and the NHS.

My understanding is we pay tax to have services for us all to use - yet the way childcare support has been introduced, it excludes ~3% of parents, creating a huge disincentive to earn over the threshold - and a massive loss if you do.

I don’t think you can justify charging people rates of 60%+ in tax while excluding them from the benefits offered to everyone else in society. That’s not a good deal…!

A better idea would be to taper childcare from 50 & at 60k, none at all, people on 100k shouldn't be claiming benefits.

Well, that is the argument. That's the point of benefits- to support those that need them. If you don't need them to cope, you shouldn't be getting them. You cannot argue that someone taking home £6k a month cannot afford childcare. You might not be able to afford childcare AND a big house AND fancy holidays, but these are choices everyone has to make when they have children.

It seems the argument is more about the fact that people do get support at £99k so it seems that the £100k mark makes things worse. Maybe people would be happier if they started tapering it at £80k or something.

Childcare needs to be more affordable. The government knows it's a big issue for a lot of working families. They've tried to make it possible for people to stay in work after having children and it has resulted in some unfairness in the system. I'd be glad you don't need the support- lots of people who are eligible for it are still struggling and end up having fewer children as a result.

I wonder if everyone complaining about the threshold for free childcare is in favour of universal benefits and services more generally? I do think it’s good to save the administrative costs and increase a sense of fairness to have more benefits universal, but I have a feeling that many of the £100001 earners are not actaully pro having a wider benefit spend on costs that affect them less?

I’m just amazed so many people just accept that this is the way it is, put up and shut up. Childcare costs are a massive barrier to women in the workplace yet it seems many women are just happy to accept the status quo.

I think it’s how the whole child benefit and who should get it debacle is what people hate. It’s simply ridiculous that a household income of say 95k get it whilst a household income of 60K dint. Not that isn’t fair

Why would anyone work to earn £100k if they can only afford the actual essentials though? There's no incentive.

No thats not the same at all, Education and NHS are universal public services, same as being able to use the roads.

Free childcare is a benefit, comes out of Welfare spending, which needs to be cut.
Or at least thats what the wealthy tell us, so they can have lower taxes.....

I think you are not looking properly at your 'choices' and owning them OP

yes it might be 'career suicide' to work a day less a week - but you make a choice about what you value don't you.

I did make that choice, I have not 'succeeded' in some ways because I worked fewer days, I've also had less money but I still like my job and am pretty succesful in it.

I think you should take more ownership of your decisions as resentment is spilling over at others who have made different choices.

No-one said they should, because it's not the case. Most families are paying for the essentials on £35k. Your essentials don't cost £65k more, you just have a wildly different definition of "essential."

Same can be said for anyone.

When I went back to work the childcare cost and extra bills for commuting etc. was equal to most of my wage I was bringing in. We'd have actually been better off if i didnt work.

The incentive was future opportunities and working towards more stability. Short term pain etc.

The incentive to achieve is that if you have a higher salary you still have more money than people who don’t earn as much.

If it’s so great being a low earner/on benefits you are free to go get a lower paid job or jack it in altogether.

But it’s all just nonsense. You still get more money than everyone else. You just want even more.

£50k after tax, NI, student loan etc ie £3k a month.

A nursery place can cost £2k a month.

Why is that the sensible point at which to cut off the funding?

I don't think most people whine about paying taxes. That's just a fact of life. We also don't mind help going to those genuinely in need but there are far too many people out there who make claiming benefits a way of life and I know for a fact they exist. That's what I object to. I work hard, not on a low income compared to some but I am by no means rich. Despite paying into the system I can't get an nhs dentists and can't get a Dr's appointment as I am told to call back at 8 the next day. Well I can't be available at 8am every morning because I have to be at this place called work, a concept clearly alien to some. So while benefits have risen I, along with other hard working people are seeing no improvement in services we thought we were paying for

Don’t you want more money? Because I do

No, because that's not the argument – the argument is that people on £100k shouldn't moan at not being about to afford 'luxuries'. Why not? Everyone who wants to earn more wants to earn more to afford better things.

You would be happy to work 20% more unpaid overtime?

OP a few times on this thread I think you’ve answered your current dilemma and lack of incentive. You ARE fortunate to have choices and it sounds to me that you should make your decision on what would make you happier. You’ve have a choice because of your earning level which “needs must” levels do not have.

You’ve said that success = happiness. So identifying - honestly - what, currently, makes you happiest ought to inform your decision (a) to drop your days and spend more time with your kids or (b) pay the tax etc because doing your job, despite how the tax unfairness feels to you, makes you happier. It’s rare we can “have it all”.

That's short term loss for more future again though. That's not the case with an increasingly taxed salary for all of your working life.