Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
The market is not all-knowing and perfect. And its greatest imperfection is rewarding the undeserving such as us, brokers, finance people, salesmen, etc. (the half parasitic, minimal value-add sectors of the work force) and depressing the wages of the deserving (GPs, teachers, first responders, etc.).
But how does one upend a system that values people like us at many multiples of a teacher's salary? How is that perverted situation remedied?
Well, you have to have a severe enough crisis to shock the system so badly that people begin to ask why a lawyer, or a broker, or some hedge fund analyst, makes so much money. You need a situation where either the market, or society, depresses the wages of the undeserving in favor of raising the wages of the deserving, such as teachers.
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The skills that lawyers, brokers and hedge-fund analysts have makes them more valuable in a market economy than teachers. The only crisis I can think of that has been severe enough to cause people to rethink that was when the Khmer Rouge took over in Cambodia, which was certainly a shock to the system but actually didn't turn out all that well for pretty much anybody. And in Cambodia today, I will wager that lawyers are paid more than teachers.
I know many of my kids' teachers. I like many of them. I am pretty sure that I could do what they do passably well. I am pretty sure that they could not do what I do. I am sympathetic with your notion that what they do is, on some level, more important. I do what I do partly in order to be able to pay to live in a nice neighborhood with good schools and better teachers. If I didn't have them to support, maybe I'd quit my job and write a novel.
