4 ms·

I'm sorry, but $37,000 per year is not a great starting salary, especially for a job that plays a fundamental role in shaping and improving our society. My wif

by SMrF 16y ago

I'm sorry, but $37,000 per year is not a great starting salary, especially for a job that plays a fundamental role in shaping and improving our society. My wife is finishing up graduate school to start teaching in poor, urban schools. Chicago starting salaries are higher, I think around $55,000. I've seen the challenge she faces at her job and I can tell you -- this is not enough money.

CWuestefeld 16y ago
Your claim that your wife isn't paid enough is demonstrably false. Sorry if this sounds like a smart-aleck reply, but I mean it in a dispassionate sense. I've seen the challenge she faces at her job and I can tell you -- this is not enough money. This is a conversation about economics, incentives, and what people actually choose to do. It is not about feelings, platitudes, and how we believe that the world should work. Any economist can tell you that if your wife and the school have entered into this arrangement of their own free will, then the amount that she is getting compensated is enough -- by definition. The fact that she is willing to perform her job for this salary and other benefits shows definitely that she values her compensation more than she values what she could otherwise derive from any other opportunity open to her. If there were something else that increased her personal utility function more, than by definition, she would choose that alternative. The absence of such a choice demonstrates that this is the best available.
- SMrF 16y ago
  Salaries are set by CPS and go up on a schedule based on years of experience. How is that a market? Yes, she is willing to work at this salary. But we look at is as a donation to society and to our city. If we have to look at her decision to be a teacher as a donation -- she is not payed enough!
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    Salaries are set by CPS ... How is that a market? Education as an industry is broken in many other ways that make it fail as a market. But in the scope of our discussion, she has chosen freely to accept the offer; the school has chosen freely to extend that offer to her. That's all that's necessary to prove my point. Yes, she is willing to work at this salary. But we look at is as a donation to society and to our city. I intentionally worded my reply so as not to limit my reference to her salary. I said her compensation, or her benefits. This includes the satisfaction that she gets from making "a donation to society and to our city". If that makes her feel good, then it's absolutely part of her compensation, part of the package deal that makes her accept the employment contract. You can't say that you want a salary that in a vacuum matches the most mundane or unpleasant job, and then reap the additional job satisfaction yourself. Think of it this way: would you take a job as an astronaut, getting paid nothing but room and board to do it? I, and I expect many other people, probably would. And we'd feel mighty lucky to have had that chance. Considering the satisfaction we got from actually going into space, the entirety of our compensation was enormous. (Really, I'm not just babbling. This is how economics works. Those people who think that economists are only thinking about money couldn't be any farther from the truth. Economics is the study of why people make decisions, why they choose one alternative above another.)
  - anamax 16y ago
    > Salaries are set by CPS and go up on a schedule based on years of experience. How is that a market? It's a market because she has a choice. > But we look at is as a donation to society and to our city. Fair enough, but that doesn't imply that you're owed more. If she's unhappy with her "donantion", she's free to not make it. > If we have to look at her decision to be a teacher as a donation -- she is not payed enough! News flash - almost everyone thinks that s\he is underpaid. If you don't like the consequences of your choice, make a different one.
- bdhe 16y ago
  > The fact that she is willing to perform her job for this salary and other benefits shows definitely that she values her compensation more than she values what she could otherwise derive from any other opportunity open to her. If there were something else that increased her personal utility function more, than by definition, she would choose that alternative. The absence of such a choice demonstrates that this is the best available. Wouldn't you rather have higher salaries and a higher barrier to entry thereby increasing the quality of education? Does this fit into the theory of incentives and economics? For eg., it is well known that Wall Street hires some of the best brains in the country; wouldn't society as a whole benefit from some fraction of the best brains in the country working to educate future generations as opposed to just those people who are satisfied (or have no other choice) with what the school system pays?
  - tokenadult 16y ago
    Wouldn't you rather have higher salaries and a higher barrier to entry thereby increasing the quality of education? Which comes first? And might performance after entry into the occupation also be important for setting rates of compensation?
- xiaoma 16y ago
  Wow! By that tortured reasoning, everyone in the world is paid enough! Every single possession that anyone ever purchases is good enough! Everybody's partner is good enough! Every choice is good enough! As long as we're fully omniscient, there are no costs in making changes and we're all perfectly rational, then all of existence is good enough! (if not, then by definition, we would choose the alternative of suicide)
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    As long as we're fully omniscient, This is not a requirement. In fact, that's the beauty of what the market does for you. All you need to know is your own utility function (and you are likely not even aware of that, it comes automatically), and the price (i.e., salary and other compensation). Friedrich Hayek won a Nobel Prize for demonstrating how pricing in a market distributes information, communicating the priorities and substitutability for everyone. there are no costs in making changes Of course there are costs in making changes. How could there not be? Surely you're not suggesting some magical world where everything is always magically altered to the optimum. Any time anyone is confronted with a choice, part of the decision making process is to consider the costs of changing. If that costs exceeds the benefits from the change, then you won't do it. So I don't see what you're trying to say in this phrase. we're all perfectly rational The rationality of actors is, admittedly, a matter of some controversy in modern economics. We know, for example, that people are systematically bad at handling values of extremely large or small scale, like the actual risks from terrorism -- we've badly overreacted to something that overall poses vanishingly small risk. However, in this particular discussion -- a person's benefits from their employment, fully considering their job satisfaction -- then I don't think that anyone is in a position to debate. There is absolutely no way that anyone can second-guess another person's utility function (that is, their values and preferences, and how much a given thing improves their quality of life). We simply cannot know what is happening in another person's mind. Indeed, we frequently don't truthfully know our own motivations. Yet it's still clear that these preferences do exist, and that we take action on them. When talking about something this micro, we have no choice but to rely on a person's observed behavior. (For much better discussion of this, see Mises' Human Action). good enough! Well, yeah. As an alternative to sarcasm, perhaps you could articulate an alternative explanation to my own. The only other that I can see is a Platonic top-down control, with a group of blessed decision-makers deciding what the relative values of everything ought to be. But there, you've still got the problems of omniscience, as well as forcing all participants to adhere to the same set of values, rather than allowing each of us to make our own choices.

by SMrF 16y ago

CWuestefeld 16y ago

Your claim that your wife isn't paid enough is demonstrably false. Sorry if this sounds like a smart-aleck reply, but I mean it in a dispassionate sense. I've seen the challenge she faces at her job and I can tell you -- this is not enough money. This is a conversation about economics, incentives, and what people actually choose to do. It is not about feelings, platitudes, and how we believe that the world should work. Any economist can tell you that if your wife and the school have entered into this arrangement of their own free will, then the amount that she is getting compensated is enough -- by definition. The fact that she is willing to perform her job for this salary and other benefits shows definitely that she values her compensation more than she values what she could otherwise derive from any other opportunity open to her. If there were something else that increased her personal utility function more, than by definition, she would choose that alternative. The absence of such a choice demonstrates that this is the best available.

SMrF 16y ago
Salaries are set by CPS and go up on a schedule based on years of experience. How is that a market? Yes, she is willing to work at this salary. But we look at is as a donation to society and to our city. If we have to look at her decision to be a teacher as a donation -- she is not payed enough!
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  Salaries are set by CPS ... How is that a market? Education as an industry is broken in many other ways that make it fail as a market. But in the scope of our discussion, she has chosen freely to accept the offer; the school has chosen freely to extend that offer to her. That's all that's necessary to prove my point. Yes, she is willing to work at this salary. But we look at is as a donation to society and to our city. I intentionally worded my reply so as not to limit my reference to her salary. I said her compensation, or her benefits. This includes the satisfaction that she gets from making "a donation to society and to our city". If that makes her feel good, then it's absolutely part of her compensation, part of the package deal that makes her accept the employment contract. You can't say that you want a salary that in a vacuum matches the most mundane or unpleasant job, and then reap the additional job satisfaction yourself. Think of it this way: would you take a job as an astronaut, getting paid nothing but room and board to do it? I, and I expect many other people, probably would. And we'd feel mighty lucky to have had that chance. Considering the satisfaction we got from actually going into space, the entirety of our compensation was enormous. (Really, I'm not just babbling. This is how economics works. Those people who think that economists are only thinking about money couldn't be any farther from the truth. Economics is the study of why people make decisions, why they choose one alternative above another.)
- anamax 16y ago
  > Salaries are set by CPS and go up on a schedule based on years of experience. How is that a market? It's a market because she has a choice. > But we look at is as a donation to society and to our city. Fair enough, but that doesn't imply that you're owed more. If she's unhappy with her "donantion", she's free to not make it. > If we have to look at her decision to be a teacher as a donation -- she is not payed enough! News flash - almost everyone thinks that s\he is underpaid. If you don't like the consequences of your choice, make a different one.
bdhe 16y ago
> The fact that she is willing to perform her job for this salary and other benefits shows definitely that she values her compensation more than she values what she could otherwise derive from any other opportunity open to her. If there were something else that increased her personal utility function more, than by definition, she would choose that alternative. The absence of such a choice demonstrates that this is the best available. Wouldn't you rather have higher salaries and a higher barrier to entry thereby increasing the quality of education? Does this fit into the theory of incentives and economics? For eg., it is well known that Wall Street hires some of the best brains in the country; wouldn't society as a whole benefit from some fraction of the best brains in the country working to educate future generations as opposed to just those people who are satisfied (or have no other choice) with what the school system pays?
- tokenadult 16y ago
  Wouldn't you rather have higher salaries and a higher barrier to entry thereby increasing the quality of education? Which comes first? And might performance after entry into the occupation also be important for setting rates of compensation?
xiaoma 16y ago
Wow! By that tortured reasoning, everyone in the world is paid enough! Every single possession that anyone ever purchases is good enough! Everybody's partner is good enough! Every choice is good enough! As long as we're fully omniscient, there are no costs in making changes and we're all perfectly rational, then all of existence is good enough! (if not, then by definition, we would choose the alternative of suicide)
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  As long as we're fully omniscient, This is not a requirement. In fact, that's the beauty of what the market does for you. All you need to know is your own utility function (and you are likely not even aware of that, it comes automatically), and the price (i.e., salary and other compensation). Friedrich Hayek won a Nobel Prize for demonstrating how pricing in a market distributes information, communicating the priorities and substitutability for everyone. there are no costs in making changes Of course there are costs in making changes. How could there not be? Surely you're not suggesting some magical world where everything is always magically altered to the optimum. Any time anyone is confronted with a choice, part of the decision making process is to consider the costs of changing. If that costs exceeds the benefits from the change, then you won't do it. So I don't see what you're trying to say in this phrase. we're all perfectly rational The rationality of actors is, admittedly, a matter of some controversy in modern economics. We know, for example, that people are systematically bad at handling values of extremely large or small scale, like the actual risks from terrorism -- we've badly overreacted to something that overall poses vanishingly small risk. However, in this particular discussion -- a person's benefits from their employment, fully considering their job satisfaction -- then I don't think that anyone is in a position to debate. There is absolutely no way that anyone can second-guess another person's utility function (that is, their values and preferences, and how much a given thing improves their quality of life). We simply cannot know what is happening in another person's mind. Indeed, we frequently don't truthfully know our own motivations. Yet it's still clear that these preferences do exist, and that we take action on them. When talking about something this micro, we have no choice but to rely on a person's observed behavior. (For much better discussion of this, see Mises' Human Action). good enough! Well, yeah. As an alternative to sarcasm, perhaps you could articulate an alternative explanation to my own. The only other that I can see is a Platonic top-down control, with a group of blessed decision-makers deciding what the relative values of everything ought to be. But there, you've still got the problems of omniscience, as well as forcing all participants to adhere to the same set of values, rather than allowing each of us to make our own choices.