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Comment by fredley | Hacker News Reader

As the article states, a lot of this is to do with the characterisation of the ultra-rich as 'hardworking', vs the characterisation of benefits claimants (legally or otherwise) as not. This narrative plays depressingly well with a lot of people in the UK, especially with those who are in the socioeconomic classes just above recipients of benefits.

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Why do you say "depressingly well?" Charitable people from the upper classes tend to have a naive, cartoonish vision of the noble poor. As someone who has been poor, who has family members who still are, I can tell you that it's a mixed bag. I know lots of people who could be characterized as benefit "scroungers." They're not bad people. They don't deserve to starve. And I'm happy they're getting the help they need.

But I wouldn't describe any of them as particularly hard-working.

That's feel-good nonsense.

Are they less valuable human beings? Do their lives mean less than the average person, or the supposedly "hard working" millionaire?

Clearly not. In fact, I went out of my way to say as much in my comment (in anticipation of responses like this one). But I guess there's almost nothing you can say to prevent this response (which is unfortunate, because it's a significant impediment to productive discussion).

Is someone who isn't "hard-working" (a non-specific and subjective concept) a lesser person?

No. I've now answered your question twice (three times, if you count my initial anticipation of this question). What is this weird impulse? What are you trying to accomplish here?

I don't think anyone was describing anyone as hard-working. I'm sure the rich are also a mixed bag when it comes to how hard-working they are. If it skews more in one direction or the other depending on which group we're talking about, I'm not sure it matters. The perception matters more than the reality, at least for this discussion.

I'm not saying that all rich people are not hard-working, or that all poor people are, I'm saying that the narrative is that that is the case, and depending on how right-wing your newspaper, it can be pretty black and white. Given the scale of damage done by tax evasion by the rich compared to benefits fraud by the poor, this characterisation undermines attempts to try and match the amount of effort spent reclaiming taxes from the rich versus identifying benefit fraudsters to the revenue that could be reclaimed from each approach.

Yup, you have both kinds. You have some people who are trying their best, and you have some people like a relative of mine: doesn't bother to get any jobs he sees as beneath him, has been to jail for dealing cocaine, lives with his mom into his 50s, and molested one of his nieces.

A lot of that barely-scraping-by class see themselves as aspirants to the middle and upper classes, which is equal parts laughable and understandable. The term generally applied to this phenomenon is "False Consciousness", as opposed to Class Consciousness.

If they want to identify a parasite class in society, they should be looking up, not down.

This is precisely true. The ideological currents within bourgeois economy and politics do so much to promote false consciousness. On the other hand, most people do not view themselves as ideological, but is that not the paradox? To accept ideology, it must first be presented as non-ideological. The reader of the bourgeois papers, the person who is apathetic to his society's material conditions, the voter, the buyer of Starbucks because for each cup they give a few pennys to some improvished farmers. Their ideology is in fact simple: that they live in a post-ideological world.

dafuq are you talking about?

I think the parent may be referring to some of the ideas of Slavoj Zizek. The class consciousness / false consciousness concept he is replying to is a Marxist theory.

It is incorrect and contemptuous to say it is laughable that they think they will go into the upper middle class. See posts elsewhere in these comments showing with data that they do have a decent shot.

There is a huge amount of income redistribution that is built in to the system. You have to be earning about £30k to even be a net contributor. We are all parasitic to a certain extent. And a lot of higher earners are dependant on the government in ways that should make a conservative blush.

Seperating ourselves into contributors and scroungers is self deception at every level. It makes it impossible to set tax or benefit levels that people will consider "fair". Everyone feels a sense of grievance and gets to be angry at other groups. Greate for pushing a political agenda!

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