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by zorked·10y ago·view on hn ↗
Why is it a given that teachers "must" have low salaries? The sixty classrooms without teachers show otherwise.

SF teachers clearly need raises, and those can be funded by taxes from all those programmers that presumably benefit from having schools in their communities.

In fact there is no reason why teacher wages shouldn't keep up with the general state of the community where they live in.

1 comments
> Why is it a given that teachers "must" have low salaries?

I explained why: at least an order of magnitude more people are capable of meeting the minimal requirements to be teachers than are capable of meeting the minimal requirements to be developers, thus the former will always be less-well-paid than the latter.

> The sixty classrooms without teachers show otherwise.

They may not be due to pay but due to union rules. And, of course, even if teachers should make more that doesn't mean that they should make much

> In fact there is no reason why teacher wages shouldn't keep up with the general state of the community where they live in.

Are you saying that teachers should make a mean or median wage? I think that's a little silly, as it's hardly a profession requiring high innate talent and intensive study, unlike engineering, medicine, law, religion. Frankly, I think a welder or a plumber should be paid more than a teacher.

But it shouldn't matter what you & I think teachers should be paid: their wages should be set by the market, as should everyone's. That's the closest thing to fair we'll ever be able to get.