to be fed up of hearing 'I've worked hard for my money'

[newbluesofa]

Lots of chat on MN recently about taxes on high earners. So heard lots of 'we have this money because we work bloody hard for it' and honestly I'm sick of it and think the people who say it are selfish.

Nurses work incredibly hard, long shifts, difficult job. Carers provide absolutely essential service, again shift work, difficult hours, difficult job. Teachers provide essential work, I know multiple teachers and they all devote evenings, weekends, school holidays to the detriment of their own families. All of these jobs also have huge emotional tolls. So 'I've worked hard for my money' means nothing to me, because a lot of people work a lot harder for a lot less.

I said:

Yes there will always be specific examples where people have beaten the odds and become wealthy coming from poverty, but those are the exceptions for a reason.

I work as a teacher in a deprived area and to be honest I’m more upset by seeing parents who have never worked, live off benefits and driving around in a brand new top of the range cars and parents who have extremely large families and by that I mean 10 or more and live off the state. As a society we cannot continue to support those who choose not to work because they get more when on benefits.

There are different types of hard work, what you describe is not necessarily always very stressful, there are jobs where decisions that person makes can literally mean life or death, or have huge impact to people and they have to live with that pressure and yes that could be from a desk. I would never be so arrogant as to say anything outside of that isn’t hard work, but equally, there is more nuance to hard work than it simply being physically demanding.

Yep. I see it too. The cycle is then repeated over and over.

Guess you don't understand what work people do with laptops? The fact it's not just grunt physical work but actually requires you to think to apply your brain?

Jeez Louise. People pretty much suggesting that meritocracy requires active support and vigilance results in others declaring COMMUNISM! (I paraphrase). What is going on with us?

Well done on the thread @newbluesofayou did well for a good amount of time but I’m dipping out too. See ya around 🤜

I know a woman from a working class background. She works long hours to provide for herself and her family. Unfortunately her kids aren't all like her. One of them didn't even do GCSEs and just dropped out of school at 16 and has never worked (not because she can't. She just doesn't want to).

And with her now grandkids, the parents are looking for them to leave school at 16, find some physical job somewhere and have no ambition to actually improve their situation.

A lot of jobs are stressful, in fact research shows that the lower you are in the pecking order at work, the greater the stress level - mainly because you are not allowed autonomy or control over what you are doing. The lower your income, and the more precarious your job is, the more stress you have to put up with at work, because you cannot afford to lose it.

People sitting behind a desk do not take decisions that can 'literally mean life or death' in that moment.

Police officers dealing with knife-wielding nutcases, bomb disposal experts disarming an IED, surgeons in an operating theatre patching up car crash victims, firefighters entering a burning building to save trapped children, pilots landing a jumbo jet in a crosswind during a thunderstorm, midwives dealing with a difficult birth, divers attempting to rescue people from a sunken vessel, soldiers on peace-keeping duties in war zones, tunnellers entering collapsed mineshafts (and many others)... their decisions are the ones that can literally mean life or death.

You have a very narrow view of the world. Of course people take life and death decisions outside of first line defence, just look at the Covid and the Infected Blood Inquiry. Are all those deaths at the hands of those who treated them?

Teachers don’t necessarily have physically demanding jobs, they are sat in classrooms, lesson planning and a desk, do they not work hard in your opinion?

But "they have to deal with badly behaved kids"

I’m sure you can appreciate that some people are suitable for “some physical job.”

I’ve got two siblings, all 3 of us raised in deprivation. My sister and I are both in professional roles that pay well.

My brother works in “some physical job,” because that is the extent of his capability. He will not earn £100k in a warehouse, or factory, and that is what he is suitable for and able to do.

I don’t believe people in that position should have to have multiple jobs to make ends meet. Having one full time role, of whatever you’re able to do, should pay enough for you to manage financially.

There is no shame in not being able to “do better” than a physical role. They need doing, and not everyone is suitable for or destined to do something else.

What one earth are you implying by those quotation marks?

I really thought you couldn't come across any more ignorant and nasty but every post just gets worse. You've proven unable to engage in any kind of actual discussion and just rely on individual examples, oh yeah and saying 'bonkers'

I think that anyone who works, works hard for their money. Whether earning £100k plus or minimum wage, if we work, we work hard or we wouldn’t be in a job. I am a teacher and am retiring in a couple of weeks. I work hard but I have also work as a health professional and in hospitality. Worked hard in both jobs for Much less pay. High wages does not equal hard work.

It's just grandstanding nonsense though. People like you with your divisive rhetoric are the problem. If you don't actually think it's a moral failing to work hard, do well and not have to be taxed into oblivion to ensure equality of outcome (i.e. removing all incentives for success) then maybe you should make that clear instead of taking potshots at perfectly normal, decent people who are in fact contributing and paying the bill for everyone else.

999 call handlers sit at desks.

So do most doctors. Teachers spend more time doing work at desks (planning, marking, making resources) than they do standing up in front of a class- and most find the desk work more stressful.

I would tend to agree that there's whole lot of busy work going on in the average office. The most highly paid people I've met in offices spend a lot of time talking about how busy they are and how many emails they have to answer, and a lot more time delegating tasks and thinking they are too important to do anything.

However, that's not every office.

There are people at the police and NCA whose entire job is analysing and categorising images of child sexual abuse. All day. They are saving lives. They are well paid and offered therapy and regular mental health checks, but still, the suicide rate and the rate of mental health breakdowns is astronomical. I would challenge you to tell them their job isn't hard because they sit at a desk.

I sit behind a desk and make potentially life or death decision every 10 minutes.....

You do realise there's more to bettering oneself than fattening one's pay packet?

Well yeah they do. Just this term, been punched, threatened with a knife, told I’d be stabbed, sworn at daily, had my classroom and other areas trashed. It’s ok though, as giving these parents more money will solve the issue, I am sure.

I know you weren't talking to me, but... Communist? Oh, my. 😂

I tried to think of some joke to do with 'prawns' and 'krabs' but I've got nothing, here's the gif that's been in my head this whole thread 😂

People who say they worked hard for their money usually haven't. They also say they were poor growing up. Sunaks idea of poor was not having sky TV.
They live in a fantasy world where all their friends are crappy individuals like them.

Yes. But don't begrudge people who do.

But saying you’ve worked hard doesn’t mean that you don’t agree that others who earn less don’t also work hard. It also doesn’t show how hard someone worked to get to that position.

Well why not go the whole hog? How dare people have more because they worked hard for it and have the audacity to have an opinion about that? Everyone should be equally poor.

Sunak wasn't poor at all. But he did work hard. Yes he went to a good school,but he then got into Oxford. Worked in finance. Stanford MBA. Before returning to a career in finance. He then left that to serve his country.