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On the contrary, social status is zero sum. In recent decades social status has been docked from some and redistributed to others — the blues say this is a good thing and that, in fact, reds still have a cache of unearned social status that should be stripped. This goes beyond racial justice ideology, to be clear; you will often hear school teachers or even PhD's complaining bitterly that plumbers make more than them, as if the plumber's salary is somehow decreasing theirs. Or decrying that liberal arts degrees don't secure a "good job". By this they mean "social inferiors have prominence that should be reallocated to me".
Blue and red class interests are fundamentally opposed.
To be clear, in your teacher example this is 100% one sided. I am a tradesman and nearly all tradesmen agree that teachers should be paid more, even if most of us would look at the pay scale and say ‘doesn’t seem cartoonishly low to me’. Most of us don’t support just giving money to school districts in the hopes they’ll use it for teacher pay raises, sure, but support for teachers making more money through something or other(state bonus program or whatever) is near universal among actual plumbers and HVAC techs.
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This makes sense. I am a teacher, and it's worse than that, though. The teachers hate KIDS because the kid has an Audi that his dad bought him.
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