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.

I've just worked out Xenia's mortgage interest rate and it's sub-prime. She must have got behind with her catalogue repayments in the past.

Swedes - I agree.

There is a general tendency to demonise everyone who doesn't work in a "caring profession". Which is all very well, but caring professions are a luxury that only developed economies can afford.

litchick/needmorecoffee I had an entry level job that paid that amount (or the equivalent, 11 years ago) as a trainee solicitor in the City. What got me that job was working really really hard (at a very ordinary school and then a good uni) and impressing at interview. Believe me, City firms of solicitors, accountants, managing consultants, bankers etc recruit solely on merit these days.

You work your absolute b*tt off. There is no overtime (obviously) but sometimes when you have worked three solid days and nights on a transaction, it is possible to realise that your salary is below the minimum wage. I had friends who worked in other, lower paid jobs and invariably they were able to maintain a social life , work/life balance etc a lot more than I was. My pay reflected the pressure and hours - and was the choice I made (not out of greed but because it was a job I enjoyed - well up until I had children when I realised that 60 hour weeks were just not going to work if I ever wanted to see my children.

My point is this - I don't know a single person who works in the City in so-called high powered jobs (with associated pay) who does not work their complete butt off. Often with no job secirity whatsoever. I do not begrudge those people those salaries.

It is not a necessary corollary to say because I believe that those in the caregiving, teaching, support, cleaning etc industries deserve to be paid much more and to be valued more, means that the other "high-level" jobs need to be paid less. And anyone I do know who works in the NHS for example - yes, they should be paid more, but I see them able to do flexible working, shifts, home at 4pm on certain days, lots of holidays etc etc - in a way not possible in the private sector.

Not quite relevant to the OP, I realise, but some people on this thread (despite their apparent status and intelligence) have a pretty simplistic notion of society and how it rewards people.

I am one of the beneficiaries of society (not that I earn anything like £100K, I hasten to add, but am a higher tax payer). But I don't think I managed this by just working hard for it, ffs. Nor do I delude myself that I'm somehow better than someone earning less, or that I work harder than they do.

The stubborn refusal of some people to accept that, as certain theorists have put it, culture is barbaric (because it relies on the oppression of some for the success of the - relative - few) is astonishing to me.

Why can't people accept that their success, however they dress it up, does come at the expense of someone else? Let me illustrate briefly:

I could not have got through university without the hordes of people who keep a massive organisation like that running: canteen workers, cleaners, janitors, security men, maintenance departments, etc. etc. The list goes ON AND ON. Many, many people made my time at university possible. All of them earn less than me now. I got my (relatively) well paid job because of them. At their expense, if you like.

Until some successful people accept this, we will continue to live in a very cruel society indeed.

But Penthesileia - those cleaners etc who kept the university running were (a) being paid a market wage for their efforts (b) benefit hugely from living in a society where there are people who earn more than them doing more skilled jobs. It is not a barbaric pyramid when an illiterate cleaner (say) can be treated by a highly-skilled doctor for free.

What Penthesileia said

I say 'good for you' if you earn a decent wage, you probably worked very hard to get where you are and I don't begrudge anyone a penny of money they have gone out and earned.
What however gets my back up is when people on extremely high wages moan that they are struggling to make ends meet.

slightly OT. Are there different types of solicitors then? Like the guy who did our mortagage conveyancing was in a scruffy office with files everywhere and didn't look like a high roller.
Are law degrees all the same but then one person is a 'poor' solicitor while another applies to be a barrister type?
Must push the kids to be magic circle (heaving Paul Daniels image out of head) layers rather than the scientists they both want to be. Science is poorly paid.
Do all 'magic circle' types have to live in Lodnon?

have only read the op but i'd certainly agree to a point. especially on the aibu board where having 20 page gripes over m&t spaces is acceptable, you'd be forgiven to think that it was a place to gripe over the most trivial of things.
but i have noticed that if someone comes on to have a bit of a whinge at something that hints at a healthy bank balance, lets say having to downgrade a car or cancel a nice holiday, a whole crowd of people seem to think they have a moral obligation to tell the person how self-centred they are/lucky to be able to afford a car etc.

Hi Anna8888 . Perhaps I ought to have written barbaric in quotation marks. Obviously the days in which the higher earners could literally enslave those below them are gone. The barbarism in today's society is 'concealed', if you like.

But your point (that the people lower down the ladder benefit from the skills of those higher up it), however true, does not negate the fact that those skills were acquired by the doctors, lawyers, etc. etc. because of, at the expense of, the people below.

It's like that famous cartoon: why are there no great female artists (depicting a woman before an easel with a saucepan on her head and kids around her ankles)? Because for centuries the freedom to create great art was not available to them.

You need a certain kind of 'freedom' to acquire skills, or do anything which our culture values: and that 'freedom' is reliant on the (relative) un-freedom of others.

On a larger scale, certain aspects of the prosperity of the West today (cheaper clothes), etc. are built on the oppression of people world-wide.

Why is this so hard for people to admit to?

Barristers and solicitors are entirely separate careers. Barristers are not the top rung of the solicitors' career ladder.

Yes, needmorecoffee there are indeed different ttypes of solictors, doing different types of work. They will all have done a law degree and the LPC - but the guy on the high street may have - got a lower degree, got a degree from a less well-respected uni, or more probably just decided that he wants to work in a high street practice doing a wide variety of work. And you can bet he probably goes home at 5.30 too!

The Magic Circle/large City firms as a rule don't do private client work (ie you or I couldn't employ them) - they only work for large companies, governments, local authorities etc. They have offices all over the world, and some of them have a large network of UK offices (so you don't have to be in London - although the salaries will be slightly less in the provinces). Their clients expect and receive round the clock legal advice and service (unlike your High Street guys whose offices close at 5 and between 12 and 1 for lunch ).And don't push your DC away from science. One of the main routes into law (if God forbid they wanted to do it) is to do your primary degree in whatever subject you want (and science is much beloved of certain Law Firms where an understanding of patents, biochemicals, etc etc is a great boon) - then you do an extra years convesrion course to law, and then the LPC like all lawyers.

Sorry bit off topic

Penthesileia Great post, I agree with you.

need - yes, there's a lot of difference between pay/working conditions etc amongst solicitors, particularly those who do mostly legal aid work. magic circle is just a nickname for the top city of london commercial law firms (which would do a lot of company and banking law).

would advise that your DS with Aspergers steer clear of a legal career - requires social skills, resilience (i.e. hiding stress under pressure from clients and colleagues) and blagging.

Thanks, Swedes.

To be honest I'm sick of threads like this.

agree, excellent posts Penthe.

Need - agree with Turniphead - a science background can be very useful, and is well respected by recruiters for law firms. I found that most trainees didn't do what I do - go straight from school to uni to law firm - but had spent extra time inbetween, whether it was working or having done another degree.

ta for the info. yeah, ds1 would make a terrible lawyer - 'but he's guilty m'lud, I'm his defence and he told me' . He's unable to bend truth either. He'll make a good, if somewhat poor, scientist
scuse the off-topicness. Was being nosy as I've never encountered a solicitor/lawyer socially and haven' the faintest idea what it all means!

Swedes

Head. Is. Swelling.

Totalchaos - A lack of social skills is one of the absolute requirements for a career in law.

need - pmsl at you've never met a solicitor socially - erm oh yes you have - well I haven't worked since early 2004 but....

Very well said, Penthesileia, I agree with every word. I think it is very difficult for us to admit that we live our lives of luxury at the expense of others because we all feel ourselves to be decent people, and this fact jars against that sense of decency. It is much easier to imagine instead that we deserve everything we have because we have worked for it. But we are deluding ourselves.

Swedes OK if we substitute social skills then for ability to manage office politics and dealings with clients/experts/opponents then!

"Why is this so hard for people to admit to?"

Because it is not the whole truth.

Think of those Chinese factory workers making our clothes. Today, China only has the skills to execute the designs of the West and relatively poorly paid workers lead rather tedious, small lives in urban factories (but rather better lives than they did as peasants yesterday); tomorrow, China will have acquired the design skills of the West and will have whole integrated industries; perhaps China will get better at design than Europe one day, and we will be making clothes to China's design. Hopefully not in my lifetime.

People do not become highly skilled and developed overnight - they need opportunities for learning. Those opportunities come in many different guises; there is undoubtedly a degree of luck as well as hard work in finding and exploiting opportunities for self-advancement.

But I don't think you can talk exclusively about oppression. Those Chinese factory workers' children may well be working next to our children tomorrow, in whatever industries the future holds.

needsmorecoffee - there are plenty of lawyers who do sciency stuff or IT stuff - the range is massive, as are the differences in pay and working hours.