David Harsanyi on Teacher Pay

Teachers are underpaid. In politics and also in
everyday life, this is almost universally accepted. A teacher in
South Dakota with a bachelor’s degree and 10 years of experience
earns $33,600 per year, which is less than the average auto repair
worker. This grievance against salary injustice is nothing new, of
course, but this particular example comes to us from a new national
study by the Center for American Progress, which details the
chicken feed teachers are forced to subsist on as they
altruistically keep your hopeless children literate.

Everyone admires teachers. Everyone wants good teachers for
their children. And naturally, liberals believe that contrasting
these salaries will emphasize the irrationality and unfairness of
the marketplace. But it doesn’t, argues David Harsanyi. And the
first and most obvious reason it doesn’t is that teachers actually
do quite well for themselves when you consider the economic
realities of their profession.

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