Can we stop acting like everyone has an equal capability to become well off?

[DeluluTaylor]

Based on the pension thread but not about OP. All this ‘why do people spend their whole lives on MW’ is so woefully ignorant. Some people don’t have a choice.
Neurodiversity
confidence
childcare availability
institutional racism
learning disabilities
trauma and it’s impact
Lifelong insecure housing
Being able to speak English but not write it
So many, many reasons why it is difficult to climb up the ladder. I’ve never been able to as I don’t have the right skills for management. But the world needs more worker bees than managers!
Who do they think should do these jobs?

Ah so in the government

I always think of someone I know. Hardly went to school. Can read but can barely write. Spelling is terrible. No qualifications at all. No parental support. Lived in a remote countryside village. Worked from age 15 and started off in a manual labour job. Started his own business and is a multi millionaire now. It can absolutely be done but there is nothing wrong with people not wanting to do any more than a mw wage job and it’s not a personal defect to not want to.

Whenever I read posts like these I always wonder about the limits of 'luck'. There is an element of determinism that I find really hard to accept.

So you think because you had untreated ADHD that it was almost inevitable that you performed badly in school, got into an abusive relationship, became a teenage mum and abused drugs and alcohol? Do you genuinely believe that there weren't crossroads and choices made by you that influenced the outcome?

I have a relative with a similar backstory. Their behaviour has really adversely impacted their own life and also their children's lives. The latter I find completely unforgivable. They blame untreated ADHD for all of it and see themselves as a victim of bad luck. We are all flawed humans. Even so called NT people can have very strong traits that can push us towards self sabotage and undesirable behaviour. It's very very difficult to manage and certainly isn't all about luck or even mostly about luck.

Even if you are not academically inclined you need to put some hard work and grit in.

I appreciate it's not the case for all, but many people on MW can and do make prudent decisions on saving, investing and pensions, despite their low income.

As a lone parent working part time, my income has mostly fallen below half of the average UK wage for most of my working life. But I've prioritised saving, investing, pensions and financial security. It is possible. Many people - whatever their income, do not - and when the opportunity arises, they don't want to take it, either through lack of understanding, apathy or a 'live for today' mentality.

Yes, the system is flawed and there are barriers - but keeping a mindset of taking action to improve your lot is a possibility. Perhaps being wealthy is not within reach, but building a stable and secure financial situation is usually in one's best interest.

Do they at least do well in their job once they are in?

If the best you can come up with is telling me to 'grow up' because of the way I expressed myself, avoiding the point made by sneering at the language, then it strongly suggests your own position is pretty 'weak and ineffectual'. However in the event you are genuinely unable to comprehend anything beyond the purely literal, I'll try again in straightforward literal language.
We need more low paid workers than high paid ones. We need more people doing the work than training or supervising them to do it. So there isn't enough senior posts to go around. Given that, how can everyone who wants to be better paid move into a more senior position?

There aren’t equal numbers of jobs at each level of the pyramid though, are there? Not everyone on a NMW job can be promoted. There aren’t enough next level jobs. And there are fewer at the one above that, and so on up.

I do think that a lot of those middle rung jobs have been disposed of and that’s a big issue - in our industry a lot of ‘middle men/middle earning ’ jobs have gone too as technology and the internet to a large extent have rendered them not needed.

I agree with you as an adult. I spent 15 years working in the NHS and absolutely doing my best to sort my life out, despite the problems. Had I not had health issues I'd still be doing it. As a child and especially a teenager, I literally was lost. I had unsupportive, emotionally distant parents, I had no idea why I couldn't just do what was expected of me and that just made it worse. I honestly don't believe that I could have done better/differently. Once I was trapped in the relationship with a child it was virtually impossible to leave. I was 17, alone and vulnerable, he was nearly 10 years older.

I don't see myself as a victim though, and my children have grown up fine. They are both happy, working and living independently and we all have a great relationship. One is married, the other is also ND but lives a good life. I have a supportive partner and another child and fortunately money isn't everything to me. I'm actually quite content with my life (health issues aside), but was just explaining why I'm never going to earn a lot of money

There are a few things at play...

We look at challenges with modern day eyes whilst at the same time the more current drive that all careers start with a university degree limits others.

My mum is severely dyslexic but was only diagnosed at 14 and left school 6 months later. She got no support, it was just an explanation - you can barely read because you are dyslexic it was always going to be this way. Now she would have picked up much earlier, had greater support and would have been channeled into subjects that she excels at. As it was she spent 35 years as an untrained nurse. She is caring and with the right support could have managed to become a qualified nurse through the old route of on the job training but probably wouldn't have managed to qualify through the university route.

There is a mismatch in salary and worth. There are the 5 C's which are jobs mostly done by women which have been historically considered as less valued and this ae These are caring, clerical, cleaning, cashier and catering.

Often in communities this isn't a single person problem but a family and society problem. If you are living on minimum wage and have a family it is less likely that you can support other members of your family through education to get the bits of paper that permits them to do the jobs that can get them out of the minimum wage trap. So we have children stuck in low waged jobs because that was all there grandparents could manage and because of that their parents had to go straight into the workplace to bring in money and that means they don't have the funds to support their children through further education.

Money breeds money, channel 4 a few years ago did an experiment where they have two shoppers identical Christmas lists. One was from a low income household and the other a higher income household. Guess what the low income household had to pay a lot more for the exact same times. Primarily as they couldn't afford to walk into shops and buy them outright. When you are living like this you need to work more hours to cover your costs and you have less time to retrain and you have a large emotional burden of life which reduces the headspace to look for alternatives. Furthermore, without a built in safety net should the new career go wrong it is harder to make that jump.

I have been fortunate, I've benefitted from a steady increase on fortunes from generation to generation. My great grandparents on both sides were living on the breadline trying to stay out of the poor house poor. My grandparents on both sides were low waged but benefited from the welfare state which moved the families into "working class". My dad managed to get on an apprenticeship that was great for him, he has an innate gift for logic and as it happened the trade he was assigned at college fitted this and it got into allowed him to move from working in the trades to being a highly skilled trades person moving up the ranks within industry. My success right now is heavily linked to this. This allowed the family to jump from "working" to "middle class". My parents were able to support me and my sisters through our a levels and on to further education. This has given us all the ability to earn more and with that we have all built comfortable lives for ourselves. It took me 11 years, 2 degrees, and 2 1 year training posts to qualify. This nearly doubled my starting salary but it was a luxury I had because I had parental support.

Careers advice is also pretty poor, it often lacks imagination. The decision of what courses and careers is often linked to a subject you mostly liked at school there are so many interesting and well paid careers that many kids haven't heard of. My cousin did psychology and a few weeks into her degree realised it was a mistake, she got a work experience through a family member in construction and she switched to a degree linked to surveying and loved it.

This neatly brings me on to my final point and that is so often it is not what you know but who you know. I got a summer job because my sister worked there and I knew they needed a short term hirer to cover annual leave. This gave me 6 weeks experience in a lab environment at the very bottom of the ladder. This allowed me to talk confidently about working in a lab when it came to getting an industrial placement also the first comment from one of the interviewers was "I worked their too, small world". From getting that placement I was able to get funding for my PhD and once I graduated allowed me to get a role in a similar company as I had done part of the job already. I got all of these positions from my hard work and abilities but I still note and value that 6 weeks job at 18 as being very influential too. It gave me something in common with the interviews, it showed I had some real life experience, something different to other candidates to talk about in interviews and generally meant I started interviews on the front foot when I could then talk about my skills and abilities.

What it boils down to is that to progress in any kind of career, you will always have to be “better” than someone else.

More intelligent, quicker, better people skills etc. Even if we get rid of all biases and barriers that will still be the case. It’s impossible for everyone to be better than someone else.

Somehow it’s kinder to call people who can’t progress lazy and not working hard enough than admit not everyone is capable.

I work in STEM and I’m the first to recognise that I’m working at the limits of my IQ. As hard as I work there are others who just understand things 100x quicker than me.

It’s illogical to think this doesn’t apply in other jobs too. You still have to be smart to be a successful plumber or hairdresser and it’s insulting to those careers if you think otherwise.

Yep ive done retail, factory work, warehouse work including 6-2/2-10pm shifts. Ive done bar work in evenings.

Life choices are a factor! I waited until i was 30 to have kids, until I'd moved up the ladder a bit and had more options for 9-5 work

But also at one stage DH and i did opposite hours. I started early, he took kids to childcare, i finished early and picked them up.

I can imagine its difficult if you are a single parent but it doesn't mean you have no options at all. Our working lives are 45 years long, kids are only young for about 10 of those. Even if you aren't able to progress in a career much before kids, you can try to once kids are older.

For a lot of people it will be a choice. I have no desire to work full time in a stressful job and die early due to stress. I've chosen a MW job over my previous role that my degree was essential for. I'm much happier and don't actually earn that much less than friends in middle management roles that come with higher tax and tons of stress.

There never were as many though. There can’t be. That’s not how hierarchies work.

I think at some point you have to take ownership of your life and do something. Even if you didn't do well at school, do something vocation. I remember someone here saying even though her DD couldn't pass maths GCSE , she's doing well with "the lashes" and her "beauty technician" course.

Teen mum, single mum, neurodiverse, low self esteem, no family support and now mum of 3 here, but good worth ethic, work hard and earn well.

Op it’s funny that I actually find your post insulting, laughing that you think I’m on mw because I must have done form of a difficulty as opposed to simple old can’t find any other job!!! I worked for years in offices but was a sahm and now all the jobs I go for have so many applicants all younger and all more technically minded/ marketing minded than me. I am fervently job hunting non stop as I am up seven days a week between the kids and the fact that two of my work days are nearly always weekends and I practically didn’t see the kids over Christmas.

I haven’t read all posts but this makes sense. Luck is part of it but this counts too.

I think that's absolutely fine. Because it makes sense for society that the more responsible a job is the more competent and skilled the person doing it should be.
The issues are, firstly there is serious doubt that this works in practice, because of all the barriers there are to certain groups of people being able to compete fairly, and the factors that help ease people into the more senior positions that are not related to their personal ability.
Secondly that the jobs that don't involve higher levels of skill are looked down on as something shameful that if you weren't so lazy you'd have moved on from. When the fact is, we need these jobs done. Someone needs to clean the toilets, stack the shelves, take incapacitated people to the toilet.
It's bad enough these roles we all need (as much if not more than some highly paid roles):are so financially unrewarding. Adding stigma to them by dismissing them as only the preserve of the lazy and unambitious, because anybody with anything about them would have 'bettered themselves' adds insult to injury.

There will always be people who defy their odds and achieve great things. However, your post displays a lack of awareness and shows your limited capacity to acknowledge that we are not all born equal.
Through my work, I see people experiencing intergenerational poverty and trauma everyday. Breaking down these cycles (and subsequent barriers/obstacles) is not as straightforward as you seem to think.
Sometimes it is valuable to step out of your bubble and try to understand the challenges others face, and the fact your unconscious bias plays a huge role in those challenges.

Similarly, people often don't realise that the first people to do things reap rewards that other people can't replicate.

Example: The TikTok poster who ended up with a house after swapping a paper clip for something more valuable and incrementally working the value up. It was a social media sensation, so people were coming out of the woodwork to offer Xboxes, etc., as swaps. If I tried it, I'd get a shrug and 'I don't need a paper clip.'

The computer game commentators. Right place, right time, right personality, skill in playing the games and being able to talk about it. Someone else comes along and can play the game but can't talk about it - fail. Talk about it but can't do it - fail. Can talk about it, can do it, but is boring - fail. Can talk about it, can do it, but lacks personality - fail.

I've always worked in low paid jobs having had no choice Sorry but if you don't look the part you aren't going to get that manager's job If you stammer if you have crippling lack of confidence If you were shouted at so much as a child that bullys reduce you to tears it's difficult even staying in a low paid job

Then you have a sense of no future as home ownership etc doesn't come with the minimum wage