To be so sick of anyone who earns a 'decent' wage being demonised by those who don't?

[sickofthis]

OK, I am very probably REALLY going to regret this, but it is getting to me, the number of threads at the moment that seem to think if anyone earns a decent wage (over £50K) they are somehow responsible for the downfall of the economy and are greedy etc.,

It's cobblers.

The truth of the matter is the housing market has grown too far too fast and too many people have borrowed beyond their means on the back of thier houses (which now aren't worth what they thought they were)

Yes, some banks took too many risks and are paying the price but this does not mean ALL bankers are greedy, horrid people. Just like all property developers (who, by the way, have made lots of money from the property boom) aren't either.

But, some people took far too many personal risks to buy material stuff they didn't need. That makes them JUST as culpable.

The housing market needs to cool off. When ordinary good people can't buy a reasonable house, there is something wrong with the pricing strategy and, one way or another, it's going to be corrected.

Should also say that this is one reason I feel the future belongs to us women.
We're grafters by nature.
We've always juggled and put the hours in.
DH says all the women in his firm who wanted to be put up this year have got their partnership because despite the fact that they know there won't be massive pay hikes this year they've still worked their arses off and been prepared to go where ever the work takes them. And they've done it without whining.

totally agree with litchick - quite simply why should you feel bad for having a certain level of income if you have worked for it.

Am loving Labour today (very rare) - all this work for benefits, the new three categories, workfare... very right wing, well done Brown. He he he.

Two interseting things - Dominic Lawson's article in the Sunday Times - wise words about how the banks are set up to be blamed etc. And a translated article from the French about the wisdom of free markets. Very good stuff.

I hadn't seen the question I was asked. I think my daughters' starting salaries on qualification will be about £65k and if (bit IF of course) they end up as partners in those places they earn about £1m - £2m a year. Obviously most people don't though.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/starting-salaries-for-city-lawyers-soar-to-pou nd60000-400918.html

One daughter's friend went from university into a job at UBS at £60k a year a couple of years ago. I think he's survived the cull but he is exceptionally good in all ways.

Yes, hard work pays off in most things whether you're a cleaner holding down 3 cleaning jobs or a top doctor or banker or lawyer or accountant or HR or PR person. The old saying funny how my luck gets so much better the harder I work is pretty accurate as to what it implies.

Quattrocento on Sat 06-Dec-08 23:27:22
"My perception is that I get paid well because I work hard and have worked hard since the age of around 13. Good exam results led to a good degree led to a good professional qualification led to a good job led to good working opportunities etc. "

I know several extremely hardworking academics with very good PhDs who are still not paid more than a fairly basic wage years after graduation and despite having a string of excellent publications to their name. (My own Russell Group university has a tendency to keep people on short-term part-time contracts for a very long time- and no, you don't get the option of claiming for overtime).

I also know several internationally renowned academics who did not get a proper job until they were in their fifties, because jobs in their area are few and far between. In a small field, there is still going to be an element of luck- (as in, jobs becoming available because someone drops off the twig.)

Some of these people are still doing extremely valuable research, so I expect they're happy with their choices. And
obviously, there is little reason to whinge if you have chosen to work in a small field.

But they would smile wryly at the thought that they do not work hard.

I would have thought that Quattrocento earns a good living because she works hard at a job where there is very significant potential for easily measured economic added value.

Academics often don't add measurable short-term economic value, so they don't earn as much.

Exactly, Anna. You've put your finger on it.

And as I said, I think academics get other compensations. It is a satisfaction to me to know that my article is used for teaching students a difficult subject and that the book I am about to finish will (hopefully) be useful to scholars long after I am dead- even if I've never been paid a penny for writing it and had to fund the research that went into it from the children's shoe allowance.

But I think we could perhaps...er...getting credit for getting a bit of work done.

Actually, one could argue that academics do add measurable short-term economic value: see here.

Yes, cory - I think that too. And in a more vainglorious way, I imagine my work, sitting on a dusty shelf for hundreds of years after I'm gone. (I tell myself this on the very rare occasions I feel a bit peeved at how much I earn in comparison to university peers, and think, 'but the work they do is transient, and nameless... My kleos will live on.' Ha bloody ha!

Seriously, though. I farking love my job. Researching for a living, constant interaction with young people full of hope and ideas (that's me being positive: see me later, when I'm dealing with a crowd of intransigents!), interesting colleagues, exciting ideas, performing when giving a lecture, helping people to understand things (nothing more exciting than seeing that 'eureka' moment in a student!). Oooh, it gives me a thrill when I realise that this is my world.

"Providing jobs" is not the same thing as adding short-term economic value, though.

OK, if you say so.

It's a chuffing funny old world when a top university professor earns the same as the starting salary for a newbie in Law. Are you telling me a newbie lawyer is more 'valuable'?

There is a lot to be said for enjoying your work. I do too. If it's well paid too then that can make life easier as well. So I tend to tell my children to try to go for both - really fun work you love plus financial rewards too but obviously that's not possible in many careers. Catholic priests for example get paid very very much less than C of E.

The main thing is that people know at university stage the likely consequences of their action so they can make informed choices rather than thinking as some do XYZ job must be good because you get a company car or free shoes or lots of parties.

I am sure those who teach my daughters must sometimes get a bit fed up that those young people's first job will pay more than a professor's life time peak university wage but there are compensations in all kinds of jobs and not everyone even can necessarily do or choose to do the work others do. And in current times some jobs are riskier than ever. I wonder if my daughter's friend at a bank still has a job for example.

Xenia, the notion of job security, and my public sector pension, are what keeps me going. If either of those went, I would have to consider my position, even though I do enjoy the work.

Good points, VBM.

Good holiday provision (though I always fail to take it!) too. (Actually, for the first time, my inability to take any leave has worked out in my favour, as I can take my annual leave as paid maternity leave instead - hooray!)

And, the way I see it, about 2/3 of the year I work for my students and my employers: lecturing, marking, pastoral care, meetings, admin (oh god, the admin. The RAE. Shudder).

But for about 1/3 of the year, I work for meeeeeeeeee! In the library, reading, thinking, taking notes, following my train of thought, doing some high-level tea-drinking with other academic chums, etc.

So, I reckon I can't expect any sympathy given that my life looks like that!

I remember my brother who works for the NHS and often compares himself to people like me, complaining about the pension changes - I think they were going to pay pensions based on lifetime earnings not final salary which in his view meant theft from him of over £250k. When the state changes that unwritten compact - that the job is for life and you are protected then it gets harder to keep people I suppose in those jobs.

But look at mmy father - worked for teh NHS until he was forced to retire at 63, put all his spare money ever into his pension; worked full time outside the NHS until 77, drew his pension at 75 - latest you were allowed to defer it and died at 77 - pension hardly benefited him - just 2 years.

On the other hand if I don't generate work we starve so my own position is very different from public sector workers. As long as my three university stage children know the score then they can take decisions to do whatever work they like whether that's entering a monastery, joining Greenpeace, working in Tesco or in the City.

As I see it, the issue over the alledged 'demonising'that goes on is not that high earners don't work hard, or have not used every ounce and effort to capitalise on their intelligence, education etc.

The issue is that some high earners on MN have not appreciated that while the going was good, some high earners benefitted perhaps disproportionately. While everage earners were, perhaps, taking out huge mortgages ot keep a roof over thieir heads or beiung deluded by marketing pressure and energetically pushed credit to run up big debts, some high earners were getting christmas bonuses of over £1M...or at least of hundreds or tens of thousands - in addition to thier salaries.

SO, now while many average earners (never mind the poor and desparate) face losing homes and income, some high earners who are STILL IN WELL PAID JOBS are moaning about 5% extra on a proportion of thier income and giving everyone else's laziness, fecklessness etc as the justification as to why their own 'crunch' is unfair, hard, etc etc. Like th OP.

You take it personally if you like QC, but along with your intelligence, hard work and success, perhap you could spend a moment employing your powers of perception, imagination and empathy and see why some high earners (like the OP) are demonised. NOT for being bankers, or earnings, per se - but for their attitude to the up and down fortunes that affect us all, and moaning about their particular challenge in the new climate.

The OP's plaintive cry "Why is it so difficult to explain that, if you DO happen to earn £200k (or similar, that's just an example) you are expected to dress and act accordingly so your expenses are naturally higher" as a justification, presumably, that the wealthy should be allowed, above all, to remain wealthy because of the terrible burden of appearing wealthy is a 21stC dumbed dow equivalent of 'let them eat cake'.

I want a society where the qualities of empathy, citizenship, joint social responsibility and trust go hand in hand in importance and respect with the need to make money to keep it all going - and the sooner the OP effs off to Switzerland (or some such place) and leaves us, the better! imo.

I think that sums it up nicely, Blu.

Where did noblesse oblige go, after all??

Good luck to Xenia's daughter - young lawyers are certainly made to earn their £60k. Often they work literally all the time (speaking from experience). Taking such a job can be akin to selling your soul to the devil! Pretty tough way to spend your twenties. Took that path myself and was involved in inducting the new trainees, I felt like telling some of them to run for the hills.

All young professionals work every hour God sends, in my experience. Can't see why some should be earning mutliples of what others earn. I really worry about the widening prosperity gap in this country. It is making so many of us ruddy miserable.

Hard work never did anyone any harm and when I worked pretty hard in my 20s I had three very small babies and was breastfeeding too so you're doing those hours plus you're up every 2 hours in the night. Life is hard for most people on the planet and often we get our best rewards through the satisfaction of the hard labour. My daughter's boyfriend has just started his first job. He leave at 6.45am and gets home around 8 or 9. (He's not a lawyer). He seems perfectly okay for now. It's much harder being a home with babies than even working through the night.

I think most of those student I know know the deal. The girl who fiddles around with antiques at Sotheby's etc doing what she loves is on an absolute pittance given her first in her degree etc. The bankers those that still have jobs, will often work 7 day weeks. My brother swans out of his NHS hospital at about 5.3pm almost every day having gone for quality of life and time with his tiny children over the filthy lucre. You take your choice. What I want people to make (or my children in particular) is informed choices.

The Sunday Times appointments is full of in my view very high, too high, public sector salaries for many many quangos. I hope the chickens come home to roost for those people who add no value and just take tax payers' money in this recession but we'll see.

Xenia, I think you are basing your 'informed choice' arguments on what economists call 'rational actor theory'. For MNetters who haven't heard of that, it's the idea that we all have the ability to make an impartial decision and then follow that decision through to the obvious consequences, assuring ourselves the desired outcome. It's linked to the notion of a meritocracy. In other words, work hard, play the game, and the rewards will surely come.

However I have always had a problem with this theory. This is because the choices people make about careers and lifestyles can be adversely affected by changes in the labour market as well as the external global environment. Banks close, lawyers fail to make partner, people fail to get promotion, all for reasons beyond their control, and so on. Salaries get eroded in relative terms for some professions, some people benefit from inherited social, cultural or financial capital and leapfrog the system, and others are overlooked in the quasi-Darwinian scrum for survival and prosperity. Some people are lucky enough to receive good patronage, others fail to find it despite being worthy. Some people have naturally better health or energy levels than others. All this affects life outcomes.

Therefore I am always a bit wary of applauding the 'self-made' wealthy and condemning the apparently feckless unless I really understand the history behind it all. And even then, I do try to take into account life's twists and turns. As I have said before, if there was less polarisation between rich and poor I think we would be having fewer of these arguments at the present time.

True. One reason I earn more than my siblings is simply because I'm the oldest child. It's why I suspect of all five children my own oldest child will do best (best here simply meaning financially). It's random although hard work makes a difference to some extent and picking to be a lawyer not a dustbin man or whatever although even in refuse (until the recycling market fell through recently) you could make a fortune. My mother knew Freddie Shepherd who made his fortune through scrap metal, I think.

I think it's true to say if a child choose to be a teacher rather than a doctor or a nurse rather than a banker they are choosing to earn less all things being equal.

I do believe there is at least some meritocracy in the UK compared to some societies where it's very hard to break from your group - lowest caste or whatever or even gender - might be pretty hard to aim to be prime minster if you're a woman in Saudi etc.

What we also need to avoid is what legions of women end up doing - falling in love and they never the man making the adverse career decision because of a man, not taking their finals because they're in love and in floods of tears whilst the boy of course rarely messes up or not taking that good job in the city but following the boyfriend to work as an au pair in Australia. So your sx can have an impact on how you do too and looks too. I think one reason the only one of my children who has found a job so far got hers was she's fairly pretty with long blonde hair as well as having the academics... and did it help that over the assessment day lunch she happened to be next to someone whose wife keeps horses and my daughter's main hobby has been show jumping - in other words did I buy her the job in a sense by earning enough myself to fund her riding and horse stuff over her teenage years or would she anyway have found a different thing in common with that person anyway because of the five children she's the least shy?And that's h ow she was born 24 years ago.. outgoing and sociable. Fixed at birth in her genes. Some peopel get the good fairy and some the bad at their christening perhaps.

boffinmum, I agree that planning for a well-paying job is one thing, it requires some degree of luck to get there and stay there. One thing that cannot be denied is the hard work involved.

Blu, thank you for your perceptive post.

I understand the reaction to the "let them eat cake" argument, but also the OP does have a point which is that it is easy just to blame lenders for lending stupid amounts of money but the borrowers had personal responsibilities too.