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Supply and demand, like always. The market cares not one bit about what someone “should” be paid, it cares about the price where no one is left willing to do th
by mwint 4y ago
Supply and demand, like always. The market cares not one bit about what someone “should” be paid, it cares about the price where no one is left willing to do the same job for less.
If you want teachers to be paid more, increase the requirements to be a teacher. I’m a proponent of requiring at least n years experience in real world work, plus education in a hard science or trade.
- nfRfqX5n 4y agoWhat other requirements? Teachers require at least a 4 year degree. Specialists like speech therapists require a masters degree. Try paying off a masters degree with a teachers salary.
- monocasa 4y agoI mean, we already have massive teacher shortages. Class sizes keep going up, and many school systems are switching to four day schedules because of staffing issues. Not everything can be looked at from a macro econ 101 supply and demand take; the real world is much more complicated than that.
- jacobr1 4y agoSometimes it is more complicated, but in this case the analysis does apply. The problem isn't on the demand side, but on the supply. And one way to increase supply is to charge a higher price, or otherwise compensate (more time off, better work environment, prestige, etc ...) and a big part of the reason we have a teacher shortage is that there aren't enough compensatory incentives.
- monocasa 4y agoSure, my point was more about the parent's analysis of "if you want teachers to be paid more, make less teachers". ie. I'm saying that we don't have to put our hopes in the basket of hoping that economic pressures force higher wages if we make teachers less prevalent; we can simply pay them more.
- giardini 4y agoSupply and demand aren't part of macroeconomics but of microeconomics
- monocasa 4y agoIt's part of both.
- AlgorithmicTime 4y ago[dead]
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago> Supply and demand, like always. Not everything follows the rules of capitalism, especially when public school teachers are paid by the government. There are giant teacher shortages across many locales in the US, so according to you we should see skyrocketing teacher pay, but that hasn't happened (pay has gone up in some locales but nowhere near the amount needed to fix teacher shortages).
- kimbernator 4y agoThe government doesn't have traditional shareholders like a corporation. Obviously they have their citizens as shareholders of a sort, but at the moment it feels like the loudest groups are prioritizing budget over outcomes.
- kimbernator 4y agoIdeological divides aside, this is an obvious downside of modern capitalism; Value is defined as what brings in money, which I would wager 99% of people would generally agree is not the best definition for the public interest. It is the easiest to measure, though. Trite as it may be to say, there's an obvious value to attracting a larger amount of people to teaching, it's just hard to quantify and takes longer than most politicians' term limits to see the larger benefits.
- kneebonian 4y ago> this is an obvious downside of modern capitalism; Value is defined as what brings in money, And in communism value is defined as what will get you promoted. And in autocracy value is loyalty to the party line And in Neo-Nazism value is what kills the most Jews And so on and so forth, let's not pretend that people making short sighted decisions for personal gain is limited to a single economic system it may be more visible or exactrebated by one system or another but it isn't like Lusheynkinism was pushed because it helped the students of the USSR better feed their people.
- kimbernator 4y agoThe problem I'm trying to highlight is that the capitalism and focus on the short-term of business is leaking a bit too much into the operation of government. Instead of directing resources in a thoughtful way, it seems more like we're trying to check boxes for the lowest price and forget about the purpose of that funding.
- jacobr1 4y agoExcept with something like K12 education we don't actually allocate resources in a market/capitalist fashion. So is your argument that we have a "mindset" problem? One could suggest the opposite problem, we don't have enough markets in eduction and could do more with charters and vouchers, or programs like magnet schools.
- kristopolous 4y ago
- news_to_me 4y agoWhat demand though? Nobody “buys” what public teachers produce - it’s a public service. It’s up to the state (and ultimately, voters) to decide what teachers make. And it’s even harder for teachers to advocate for themselves in states where teacher unions are banned.
- mwint 4y agoThere’s absolutely a supply demand cycle here. If wages are too low, teachers will do something else. School quality suffers, parents (may) make noise, politicians raise the wages (or do something else to appease their constituents). The voters are the customers.
- kristopolous 4y agoCan you give any material historical examples to support your hypothesis?
- dividefuel 4y agoI think we tend to see the opposite cycle playing out more often: "We can't hire enough teachers" -> "Let's reduce the requirements" -> "These teachers aren't very good or qualified, there's no reason to give them a raise" -> "We can't hire enough teachers!"