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Notes -
This is a personal anecdote. I always hear that teacher are very underpaid in relation to the value they bring but having worked as one for some years and knowing personally some teachers, that doesn't seem true. Most are quite lazy and relaxed on the job and mostly they seem unfirable, and they use the relative low hours to get a second job, generally private tutoring. Now, there's a disconnect between my lived experience(TM) and the rhetoric. Was I just unlucky in my encounter? I would like to research and read more regarding this but all I find is article about how teachers deserve the highest pay.
The people who say teachers are "underpaid (they are paid slightly lower than the highest paid countries if you take GDPc into account., But they are not underpaid by any reasonable comparison)" in the US, are not making a quantifiable argument. They are making a vibes-based argument.
These same people think education is that which turns beast into man, incompetent into competent, and savages into civilized. There's also a grand narrative aspect to it; teachers shape the minds of the owners of the future. In their world, teachers getting paid anything less than infinite (or engineers or worse programmers or even worse businessmen) is a tragedy. Because ____________{uncharitably they are growing their [very very valuable!] tribe because the ideology that puts formal education above all else is perpetuated by... educators}.
A similar argument is people who argue doctors are underpaid because "they save lives". Unfortunately, economics doesn't work that way, water keeps you alive but it costs less than an iPhone.
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