NEW Year seems as good a time as any to pincer old tropes between two fingers and hold them up to the light.

Ambition is a regular theme at this time of year: the ambition to be thinner and healthier; to be more punctual; to carry out random acts of kindness. To just be better, a gleaming version of ourselves.

These are easy, acceptable ambitions. New Year fell on a Monday and if we’d broken them by Friday, well, so be it. There’s always next year.

Financial ambition is another thing entirely. For many, it is the default position. To earn more money is to be successful. To earn more money is to work hard, strive, aim for betterment.

More money to buy a larger house, drive a fancier car, go abroad, help out your children. Ambition has a price tag.

In this world view, education is only valuable as the path to a better job, the better job the path to more money.

It’s why young people with a decent rack of Highers are urged towards university when a vocational course or college might suit them just as well or better.

It's the sort of attitude that allowed the MSP Annie Wells to publicly deride a swathe of the electorate last month. She illustrated this view perfectly in a divisive tweet following the Scottish budget announcement that those earning more than £33,000 would pay increased tax.

“A message from the SNP to the one million Scots who are to pay more tax," she wrote. "Don’t be hard working and don’t be successful in the SNP’s Scotland.”

At least we have an exact price for success: £33,000. As well as being offensive, this position is illogical.

The suggestion that those who earn a lower wage do not work as hard as others is bizarre, not to mention unquantifiable. What is hard work? It means all things to all employees. It is the excuse used by local authorities for paying men and women different wages for comparable work: a bin man is hard working, taking on physical labour, while a cleaner is merely working, in more pleasant and less strenuous environs. The Court of Session disagrees and now, following years of battle from feisty women, reparations must be paid.

Wealth is seen as an impressive pursuit. Even if using unethical means or the exploitation of others to achieve it, the acquisition of wealth is to be admired. Modest ambitions - to work in a job you enjoy but without promotion, to stay in the town you grew up in - need explanation and occasionally even defended.

Presumably those who earn more than £33,000 buy coffee and have their cars repaired and employ cleaners. Do they feel superior to these people? Or pity them? Do they understand that it takes many parts to make a functioning whole?

If you think those who earn lower salaries should be striving for financial self-improvement then where does the end point come.

If every junior mechanic went on to open their own garage we would have an abundance of failed businesses with too few customers to go round. If every barista went on to open their own coffee shop it would become the scene from the Simpsons where the entire mall transforms into a Starbucks in the time it takes for Bart to have his ear pierced.

Such a stance frowns upon women most. Low paid, low status jobs tend to be taken on by women: cleaning roles, caring roles, childcare roles. By implying women are “settling” for these roles and failing to show ambition, we are saying the role of these women in society has lesser value.

They are not hard-working. They are not successful.

That's the thing with financial ambition: you are saying some people are literally and figuratively worth more than others. We need the high earners and entrepreneurs to ensure the economy keeps ticking. We need everyone else for everything else.

It's time to respect a more diverse range of life choices. After all, we all rely on each other to get by. That's a good trope to carry through 2018.