> And your examples are outliers With respect to the world? Yes. No doubt teachers in Niger are making pennies a day and most teachers somewhere in between. Bu

> And your examples are outliers With respect to the world? Yes. No doubt teachers in Niger are making pennies a day and most teachers somewhere in between. But with respect to here? No. That is very much typical. > With how important it is How important is it? This is the most educated place on earth, according to the OECD. What do we have to show for it? Presumably you live in another part of the world. When you think: Educated utopia, no doubt this is where you think of (I am curious if you guess right). What stands out about it? > I think teaching should be a competitive and well-compensated field. This is contradictory. Competition drives down wages. Monopoly is the way to fortune! Teaching here is supply managed. The government controls how many accredited teachers are produced each year, and has reduced the number of would-be teachers allowed to be accredited in the past when there was too much competitive pressure. This creates an Old Boys Club that keeps the hobos who would drive down wages out. As such, they can demand just about anything they want, hence being amongst the top earners. About the only job that might pay more is software developer (if just barely), and only because software developers have figured out how to scale their work. Teachers are reluctant to scale. > Those salaries are above the median, but not as much as I think they deserve. If all the income in this jurisdiction was evenly divided amongst the working population, each person would make approximately $60,000 each year. While an economy need not be zero sum, it will be zero sum if there is no change in behaviour. As a thought experiment, if we assume that teachers want to keep on teaching the way they always have, who do you want to take from in order to pay them more?