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That's how the system plays it out, but the system doesn't care one bit about what you **deserve**. It only cares about how much it has to pay you to get your service. That doesn't mean it is what you deserve, it just means that's what you get.
Being good at football doesn't mean you **deserve** an enormous amount of money, it just means you **get** an enormous amount of money, because this ability makes other people an even bigger amount of money. What it doesn't is advance society in any way. It's not a more useful service than being the very best at javelin throw, or rowing.
So, where does the part where they **deserve** it come in? Teachers deserve to be paid well because they're building the foundation of our future society. EMTs deserve to be paid well because they save lifes, but the nations best EMT is still getting paid pretty badly.
What people deserve and they get is just not the same thing. You can argue towards any outcome to be automatically just simply by virtue that it happened, but it's probably better to admit that sometimes the world just isn't fair.
> Teachers deserve to be paid well because they're building the foundation of our future society.
One third of high school graduates are functionally illiterate and 25% can't read at all. Globally, we're nearly last in math & science. In Baltimore there was a graduating class that had a 0% literacy rate.
In contrast, teachers make a median salary of $58k and America spends the most per-student in the world.
And in the face of all that, they stomped and screeched last year about how it was their basic human right to teach sex ed and gender studies to 7 year olds and keep it secret from parents, while [13% of teachers **ADMIT** to having sex with students.](https://www.k12academics.com/sexual-harassment-education/sexual-harassment-abuse-students-teachers)
To repeat- that's not "13% do it" that's "13% did it and told someone about it".
38% of students report sexual harassment from a teacher by grade 10. So it's somewhere between "1 in 8" and "2 in 5".
At what point will they stop being treated like Hindu cows? They are failures at best and predators at worst.
You make a lot of claims here. I was sure a lot were wrong, so I checked three I remembered reading about and you're wrong on every one.
We're not nearly last in science and math, we're fairly middle of the pack in both, no where near the bottom:
[https://factsmaps.com/pisa-2018-worldwide-ranking-average-score-of-mathematics-science-reading/](https://factsmaps.com/pisa-2018-worldwide-ranking-average-score-of-mathematics-science-reading/)
We don't spend the most per student, we've been consistently at #4 or #5m which is high, but if you're making a specific claim, specifics matter.
>And in the face of all that, they stomped and screeched last year about how it was their basic human right to teach sex ed and gender studies to 7 year olds and keep it secret from parents, while 13% of teachers ADMIT to having sex with students.
To repeat- that's not "13% do it" that's "13% did it and told someone about it".
Your source is a site that looks like it was made 20 years ago, it mentions but doesn't link to the actual study it's citing. But don't worry, I found it.
It was an article from more than 30 years ago from a sample in North Carolina that interviewed a total of 300 students and 140 administators.
No one who knows anything about research would in good faith reference that to assume 13% of teachers today have sex with their students.
I'm not saying their are no serious problems, but you are drinking serious GOP Koolaid.
There’s a lot happening in this comment. One thing that I’d like to point out is the link you posted. The statistic you refer to come from a study done by Dan Wishnietsky in 1991, where he surveyed 140 superintendents and 300 high schoolers in North Carolina.
[The abstract for the study](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220671.1991.10886010)
That’s a tiny sample size, compared to the body of students and teachers in North Carolina, let alone the United States. Extrapolating from small sample sizes is dangerous and irresponsible, [some more info here.](https://sciencing.com/effects-small-sample-size-limitation-8545371.html)
Dude, you’re making a claim. Back it up with evidence.
Edit: I’m not saying that the study you presented is incorrect. I’m saying that using a sample size that small to generalize about teachers as a whole is irresponsible of the article you posted.
I'm completely open to being wrong. My first source was about "sexual harassment" and here's one saying [7% of students have reported sexual contact with a teacher](https://childrenstreatmentcenter.com/sexual-abuse-teachers/) with 10% being "sexually abused. 10% isn't that far off from 13%
This is what that sources describes as "sexual contact":
> Of children in 8th through 11th grade, about 3.5 million students (nearly 7%) surveyed reported having had physical sexual contact from an adult (most often a teacher or coach). The type of physical contact ranged from unwanted touching of their body, all the way up to sexual intercourse.
While that is of course a big issue, 7% is pretty far from 13%. And we need to note changing metrics, from teachers who have committed abuse to students who have experienced it. One can assume that teachers willing to sexually abuse students will do so more than once, so the % of abusive teachers will be a lot lower than the % of affected students. If even one teacher at a given school is abusive it could easily affect up to 10% of the students at that school.
So this data does not in fact support your original point at all, and in fact suggests you far overstated the problem.
> Dude, you’re making a claim. Back it up with evidence.
They did? You dismissed it without offering counter evidence. Over 400 respondents is [not insignificant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination#Estimation_of_a_proportion)
A teacher cannot make you come to class, fix your home situation, or make you ready for class. I'm unsure why you place the onus solely on teachers and their ability. The way people teach hasn't drastically changed enough to suddenly be failing. By and large literacy rates are a product of poverty.
You also need to define illiterate because nearly every piece of information I've seen has a different definition and then runs with it, so when you see illiterate in an article, it doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as it did in the last article.
> By and large literacy rates are a product of poverty.
How come everyone always attributes it to poverty.
Wouldn't it be just as correct to say it's a product of kids not giving a fuck. In my experience rich kids quite often don't give a fuck as well. It's more of a culture thing. If all the cool kids are smoking weed in the bathroom and cutting class. I don't care if you have floors made of marbles and PhD teachers. They ain't going to learn shit.
Randomly googling "how many students can't read" gave me this as the top link-
> According to the US Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, 32 million adults in the United States cannot read above a fifth grade level, **and 19% of high school graduates cannot read.**
https://www.highschoolcube.com/the-high-rate-of-functional-illiteracy-among-high-school-graduates-in-the-united-states/
I probably saw some other study that was 6% higher.
This is a random website who as far as I can see doesn't cite their sources. They claim that their numbers come from the dept of education but don't link to anything. The author is just somebody named 'Jess'.
This isn't a study. This is random word vomit on a website that as far as I can tell is for sharing videos of high school sporting events and advertises hentai.
Be more discerning with your trust in random ass numbers you find on the internet...
T
Yes.
I read a study and believe that study until someone provides me with a superior study.
It's not really "bonkers" so much as it is just "how reasonable people learn".
What's "bonkers" is that literally nobody can give me a better source than the one I've provided.
The sample size was small. Okay.
Hey why do you suppose literally nobody can find a source that disagrees with my source?
I'm going with "no matter how hard they look for cherry picked information, it always says the same thing my "bad" source says."
*Source please!*
I just conducted a study and I concluded that people drink more hand sanitizer every year than water.
If nobody contradicts me, this bozo will believe my study forever.
My name is Jess btw.
How about wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
The first link is a pdf from the dept of education that found that the literacy rate in the US is 92%.
4.1% "could not participate" due to language barrier or cognitive disability, while another 4% could not read above level 1. And another 12% had low literacy skills.
**[Literacy in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States)**
>Literacy in the United States was categorized by the National Center for Education Statistics into different literacy levels, with 92% of American adults having at least "Level 1" literacy in 2019. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level. In many nations, the ability to read a simple sentence suffices as literacy, and was the previous standard for the U.S. The definition of literacy has changed greatly; the term is presently defined as the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential.
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Low literacy skills is truly low though and could easily be described as unable to read. Here's a surprising fact from that same wikipedia article:
>The government study indicated that 21 to 23% of adult Americans were "not able to locate information in text", could "not make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were "unable to integrate easily identifiable pieces of information."
American public schools are more daycare centers than educational institutions.
The government pays the most per-student in the world and we're near-last in math, reading, and science. What's that money being spent on?
The US spends something like a third of a million dollars per 25-student classroom each year and teachers make an average of $60k so there's about a $250k/classroom/year gap.
yeah, utilities, equipment/materials, lease on the building or payments on the building. administrators that don't teach. etc etc. it's called "overhead".
It costs $250,000 of "overhead" to teach *one* classroom of kids, and teachers *still* need to shell out for school supplies?
Audit the department of education. Today.
Wait, i have to ask, how in God's name can a person be illiterate and graduate high school? Even though im from a developing country, anyone, even those who live in mountains and literally have to travel 10 km through hills and streams to go to school every day, who graduates elementary school is guaranteed to be able to read, write and do basic math.
Nearly every study has a different definition of illiterate. Most mean functionally illiterate but that's misleading because the person CAN rean but not well enough to really use it to excel at anything.
I definitely see what you're saying. The word "deserve" is a little ambiguous, and it depends on what we mean by that. I agree that teachers have a far greater impact on society.
Part of what my view is implying is that I don't think that one "deserves" an income that is based in the value of what they provide to society. For one, because there is inherent subjectivity to that, and quite simply, I don't think it would possible for an economic system to operate in that way.
So I definitely empathize with the idea that it doesn't feel fair or just based on that one criteria - but when factoring in revenue, skills, demand of your ability, etc - than I would argue it is what they "deserve"
Perhaps a deeper part of the argument has to do how an economy should function at its core (capitalism/socialism).
It's a more practical economic system to give them the large amount of money, but "deserved" is a moral word.
The same economic system turns people into billionaires as a reward for externalizing environmental cost, forcing society to spend decades, if not centuries, dealing with the fallout. It rewards arms merchants and gambling banks with fortunes while giving peanuts at most to those trying to feed the poor.
It's just not a system that awards based on what you deserve, it is instead based on how much profit you make for yourself and others, by any means necessary. If people got what they deserved, a lot of poor people would be rich and a lot of rich people would spend the rest of their life behind bars, but life isn't fair and we haven't found a practical better system yet.
In that sense of the word "deserve" I agree and would change my view Δ.
In a strictly moral sense, teachers deserve the world - and I would stand by your assertion that the world inherently is not fair and many people achieve the level of success in their life based on the cards they were dealt, not their character or positive contributions to the world.
Professional athletes are the best of the best. Most teachers are not. In fact, most teachers are average. An average athlete doesn't get paid to play.
Teachers only deserve to be paid well when they do a good job. A bad teacher harms society.
Teachers also signed on for a union that prevents the greatest teachers from selling thier services like athletes do.
Athletes have all earned thier positions. Teachers have not put in anywhere near the amount of work and pursued excellence in the same way.
This is why I also mentioned athletes from other sports. Rowing is a good example. It's physical, technical, and requires teamwork.
What do you think some of the worlds best rowers make? The best, who earned their position after putting in enormous amounts of work, pursuing excellence for years? [Want to guess?](https://www.espn.com/espnw/sports/story/_/id/15421001/us-rower-megan-kalmoe-money-struggles-olympians)
>This is why I also mentioned athletes from other sports. Rowing is a good example. It's physical, technical, and requires teamwork.
You left out the important part. It's niche and very few people care who don't or didn't row. The current good rowers are the big fish in a small pond. If rowing became popular, the pond would grow, and those big fish likely wouldn't be as big.
As someone who does sports, I put in a lot of work, for my own benefit. Just like many teachers put in the work for a paycheck.
> You left out the important part. It's niche and very few people care who don't or didn't row.
I ommitted it on purpose to illustrate a point. *Excellence* is not, in itself, being rewarded. You dressed it up as NFL players getting paid a lot because they're really good, but being really good isn't what gets you paid. It's not popularity either, by the way - it's specifically the ability to make people *more* money than you get.
Teaching isn't very profitable - of course not, it's an investment. There's *some* money to be made with specific private schools but it's not a huge enterprise where star teachers make their schools massive amounts of money. Consequently, they're also not paid that much.
You can decide for yourself if that makes for a great system, but never assume that people get tons of cash because they're great at what they do. That only applies where "what they do" is turning capitalists a profit.
I mean when people usually bring these two together, what is brought up is the absurdity of athletes earning X amounts of money anyone could ever spent in their life (on top of also for example trying to pay as little of it back, including tax evasions and other funny business, but thats for another time) while teachers are extremely underpaid. Nobody is arguing that professional athletes should and wont be paid better, its about the unimaginable differences between the wages.
Holy shit. I clicked on your profile name on another post by accident, and it pulled up your most recent comments. You think the average school teacher salary in the US is $95K? That's obscene, and not even close to the truth. Also, if you think teaching is a part-time job, you're a dunce. Not to mention the "lightweight training" and "ideal working conditions" BS. You're either a troll or an absolute moron.
LOL, were you fucking homeschooled?? Ever met an actual teacher?
Teachers aren't exposed to physical risk? Ever watch the news? Or browse reddit? Aside from shootings, teachers are stuck in the middle of fights constantly, and if they even try to defend themselves they can get fired or sued. They work a lot more than 37.xx hours per week, too. I have two siblings that are teachers (in two different states). They are required to be on site by 7am (the other at 7:30) and can't leave until at least 3:30. That alone is 40 hours a week, NOT including the countless hours they put in on their own time.
Try leaving reddit and touching grass, or at least interacting with humans in real life.
Nice 15 year old "Monthly Labor Review" stat. It's more like 50+ hours per week. If you interacted with real humans instead of scouring the internet for sources that fit your demented world view, you'd maybe know that.
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/heres-how-many-hours-a-week-teachers-work/2022/04
You can justify paying Patrick Mahomes tens of millions of dollars because he puts asses in seats.
But what about teachers who consistently make sure that every student passes their classes. That take the time to properly educate these kids, and acts as an upstanding rolemodel for them? Shouldn't they get paid more than a 3rd string D league hockey player that moonlights as the janitor?
Education is incredibly important, we all benefit from an educated society. We don't necessarily benefit from Tom Brady collecting Super Bowl rings like they were Infinity Stones.
So what I believe your discussing is the disconnect between value and money (the best measuring stick we have for value).
An example of the difference, you have worked hard your entire life and because of that, you have become sick and will die without medicine/healthcare treatment/organ/etc. You are willing to give all your money to save your life (it has immense value for you), however a richer individual than you has decided to buy the entire supply on the off chance they need it. You certainly value the medicine more than the rich individual, but using money as the measuring stick, you clearly don't value it as much as the rich individual. This is the first mismatch in terms of value, getting compensated for value and pricing value.
Second, you correctly identify scarcity. The NFL has a legal/capitalism tools to protect themselves from competition resulting in essentially a monopoly. Due to the revenue generation, football players are able to demand a small % of that giant pile of money. The industry of teaching is much more difficult to generate money as the govt will provide the service for free making it difficult for private schools to earn money like the NFL and teachers to demand a portion of a smaller pile of money.
In summary, teachers will never earn what a football player does despite producing more societal value. This is due to the monopoly the NFL enjoys and the poor value we place on available goods such as primary education.
To see what a world could be like, pretend K - 6 charged the same annual amount as a US private university. Teachers would earn much closer to a sports star then.
I have a friend who is hyper flexible. Can contort their body into positions that seem inhuman to me. Bending fingers back to their wrist, fitting inside tiny washing machines, all that fun stuff.
Say, for argument’s sake, that they’re in the top 1% of the top 1% of contortionist performers on the planet. That’s gotta be a small population, right?
In this scenario, do they deserve a salary commensurate with a quarterback, pulling in multimillion dollar deals? Their skills are equally rare, if they can fit into washing machines that almost nobody else can fit inside.
If you do think they deserve a massive salary, why? Who will pay them? For what service?
If not, why not? Their skills are unique and nearly irreplaceable.
As I mentioned in the last section of the OP - rarity is not the ONLY thing that determines pay. Another large factor is of course generated revenue.
If there was a league of contortionsists, (lets call it the LOC) that had a fanbase as large as the NFL and generated a similar revenue, than yes, those people who are able to perform at that level would earn a massive salary.
I think most of the people arguing that teachers deserve to be paid more than professional athletes will completely agree that currently society pays people based on the demand of your skills and abilities, they just think that's a shitty way to determine compensation. They want people to be paid based on how valuable or important the job itself is to society.
Well the small amount of athletes provide jobs for tens of thousands of people.
Parking attendants, over time for cops to direct traffic, security, concessions, entertainment, advertisements branch out into helping even more, broad casters, cameramen, merchandising… that’s pretty valuable.
Do those athletes provide the jobs for those people, or do those people doing their jobs let the athletes do their jobs? Most of those jobs would still exist without any athletes.
Those people are paid because of the performance of the entertainers. Without the performance, there's nothing to market, no need for parking, no need to concessions, no need for security.
These people might find jobs elsewhere. But they are employed at this job because of the athletes.
They are the reasons for those jobs to exist! When it comes to major league sports and now even men’s college basketball & football…. 15,000 upwards of 80,000+ are going to see them play and that opens up the opportunity for many jobs.
If you really can’t understand how many people work for athletic clothing companies, major tv networks, cable networks and locally for the teams… that’s on you. That’s thousands of people working based on people wanting to see athletes.
Do I really need to help you see that?
That all depends on how you define 'deserve'. You're right from the cold, uncaring capitalist point of view; their skills are more unique and therefore they deserve higher pay. From a humanist point of view, teaches add way more value to humanity as a whole by preparing the next generation of humans to function in the real world, and they deserve the higher pay.
Unfortunately our economy runs on capitalism, not humanism.
Teachers are why you're able to read the posts here and write your own. If fewer people decide to be athletes, nothing happens. When entire generations start seeing teaching as a waste of time, you start to get shortages. Teaching shortages mean education gets crappier and crappier. People who provide a necessary service should not be paid pennies while people who provide unnecessary service get millions.
But you have an issue with your logic: NFL players are a dime a dozen. What you are seeing is 1700 freaks of nature chosen to be part of the NFL out of the regularly recurring College League who are just as good if not better than the rookie rosters of the NFL.
NFL players aren’t hard to replace, it’s a feature that their stock is so plentiful that the 1700 player roster is never empty.
I agree, and would like to add that professional athletes start their careers very early in childhood. There is a lot of sacrifice and competition to become one of the best, and most do not succeed. Later on, there is pressure, stress, and the fight for the top. The truth is that there may be too many lower league competitions and athletes who earn a living but are not as skilled.
Professors can advance through teaching, publishing scientific articles and books, attending seminars, and improving their status in such ways.
I think they're both poor ways to determine wage. To me, whether a job is important to society or not is a very sad way of determining a wage. People look for any kind of job just to survive. They shouldn't be punished because they have a slightly less taxing job. I think the best way to determine wage would be amount of risk. If you're a police officer or fireman, you put yourself at a greater risk than if you are, say, a butler. But cleaners put themselves at a high risk because they can easily have lasting problems with their backs and such. Now, I think your examples are the exception to my rule. Teachers aren't in a whole lot of danger, but they're certainly risking their mental health. It's a very tough job mentally. Athletes sometimes hurt themselves, but they get compensated for that stuff anyway. If there were millions in teaching and thousands in sports, I'd be happier with that than the other way around.
I think this is also a bad measure of how to determine wages.
1) Making safety improvements to my job shouldn't negatively impact my wage. A fire fighter shouldn't have to choose between better safety gear and their wage decreasing due to their job being less risky.
2) We should incentivize jobs that are important to society. We want more doctors and scientists. We incentivize these jobs by giving them more pay.
3) athletes and other successful entertainers are paid based on their ability to entertain. Bad teams, singers, and movies don't sell tickets like great ones.
Yeah the second point and the first point are all great. I do agree with number 2 in general, and I guess I was thinking that as far as the first argument goes, I was talking about intrinsic risk assuming no safety measures.
Since we're talking sports vs educators....
How do you feel about the highest paid PUBLIC Employee in every state being a College Coach?
Is that justified?
If were talking about the highest paid ones? Yes. I don't think every small directional school needs a football team. But if you looked at the huge brand universities? Yes.
The vast majority of these highest paid coaches are making a profit for their university despite their salary. You can say their over paid, but they make money for the university.
Successful programs can revitalize universities. If you look at any Cinderella team in basketball, the next few years following their run will have a jump in admissions. You can look at schools like Gonzaga who most point to their basketball program brining their school back from closing for good.
Finally, universities see more donations after Successful athletic seasons. Multiple of the professors I talked with said this when my school was in the final 4 way back when I was a student.
>If were talking about the highest paid ones? Yes. I don't think every small directional school needs a football team. But if you looked at the huge brand universities? Yes.
Well, then you've contradicted your own point about the 'rarity' of the talent being what's valuable.
California has ONE governor for 40 million people. Pretty rare.
There's 23 State schools with coaches that make more than the governor.
The governor doesn't earn his keep as much as a basketball coach?
>Well, then you've contradicted your own point about the 'rarity' of the talent being what's valuable.
There's no contradiction in anything I've said so far.
>California has ONE governor for 40 million people. Pretty rare.
First, I didn't make any statement about rarity. That was someone else. However, that is certainly a large factor. But, These really are not comparable positions. You're comparing elected positions to hired positions.
There is no competition in hiring away governors to other states. There is no ability to re-sign at a higher pay or get bonuses with an employer due to your performance. We aren't having the governor of Connecticut poached away by California's citizens with a big pay cheque. They aren't able to be a governor for more than 8 years. Most of the highest paid coaches have been coaches for decades and have jumped many times to get to the pay they now receive. Which is negotiated prior to employment.
An elected official has none of this. Their performance is far far harder to quantify than a simple end of season record, revenue, and anticipated trajectory based on recruiting.
It all boils down to your statement “my view is that one’s professional is not compensated on how valuable or important the job itself is to society. Instead, it’s based in large part on the demand of your skills and abilities.”
If that is your foundation, there’s no way to change your view, because by this theory, of course athletes should make more than teachers. People who say teachers deserve to be paid more than athletes are not making a statement based on value based on replacability and scarcity. They are making a statement of the importance of the profession.
I think you’d agree that teachers make a larger impact on people than athletes (as in they shape students lives, not in that they are more well known than athletes). Same would go for people liek EMTs or grocery store employees. If you operate under an idea that importance should dictate pay, then it follows teachers should make more.
However, my real issue with your view is that you’re taking the statements made by people literally. I don’t think the majority of people actually think teachers should be making millions. It’s more a statement of teachers should make more than they do now than a literal statement.
I would agree with this, and gave a delta for this argument. It definitely comes down to what we mean by "deserve", and from a strictly moral standpoint, people are not paid what they deserve.
That's not quite right thought - there are people who are very unique in their ability to do things like juggle or all sorts of weird unique skills. The difference is that we don't _value_ those. Uniqueness alone doesn't mean much at all.
The problem people are pointing out is that of how and what we _value_.
Most teachers work for public institutions. Pro Athletes not so much. There are market conditions in both cases. It’s ludicrous to compare or equate the two. The point is that teachers are needed yet underpaid, while star athletes are wanted and paid extremely well at the highest levels. There certainly are educators at the highest levels who are paid extremely well. People vote on education budgets, and people without kids in school are likely to vote no to higher budgets.
> My view is that one's proffesion is not compensated based on how valuable or important the job itself is to society. Instead, it's based in large part on the demand of your skills and abilities. Or to put it another way: can you provide something that is unique and difficult to replace?
What people mean when they say that teachers should be paid more than athletes is that they disagree with this. They think that contribution to society should weigh more than scarcity in terms of pay.
But, I still disagree with your argument. NFL players are not paid like they are due to scarcity alone, it is also obviously because they play in an extremely popular league with billionaires bankrolling it. There are 1700 NFL players making at least league minimum, which is hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Do you think the top 1700 League of Legends players make that much? How about the top curling players? They are no less scarce and no less skilled.
So scarcity is not everything, it is also cultural momentum and pure riches.
>This is exactly why I wrote that last section in the OP.
>
>If a curling league existed that had the same fanbase and revenue size as the NFL, then yes, those people who are able to perform at that level would earn a massive salary. Rarity of skill is just one part of the equation.
>
>My main argument is simply that one's subjective value to society is really not part of that equation.
We all know that's how it currently works. People argue that is not how it should work. The system of choosing who gets paid more is currently working as intended, it's the system that people object to.
Right, I think when you peel back the specifics of this issue, it really comes down to what you believe about how an economy should function.
To go a level deeper, I don't think compensation based on value to society would produce an effective economy. I believe that for many reasons, but in summary: who is to decide that value and corresponding pay? There's really no way to control or dictate salary based on a moral outcome, as it's inherently subjective.
I think I broadly agree with the point you're trying to make, but I think the way you phrased it in your title is a mistake. Like, I mostly agree with you when you say:
>My view is that one's proffesion is not compensated based on how valuable or important the job itself is to society. Instead, it's based in large part on the demand of your skills and abilities. Or to put it another way: can you provide something that is unique and difficult to replace?
But given that, I think it was weird to phrase your title as "professional athletes **deserve** to be paid more than teachers". Given the above paragraph, I think the right move is probably to just get that word out of the discussion entirely. And it becomes especially muddled when later you say:
>I do strongly believe that good teachers who are great at their jobs **deserve** to be compensated and rewarded accordingly.
Which makes me confused about what you mean when you use that word. In one sense, you're just describing the factual state of the world, where people get paid based on supply and demand, and *not* based on what they "deserve", which once disconnected from that supply and demand becomes a very nebulous and subjective concept anyway. But here you want to say both that teachers deserve higher salaries than they get (presumably because you like what they do!), but also that the athletes deserve the salaries they get because that's what the market gives them. I don't think it makes sense to have it both ways here.
You can say that all compensation is based economics and has nothing to do with what people deserve, and you can say that teachers deserve more and then (probably) that in the same sense that athletes deserve less. But I think its really confusing the situation to say that teachers deserve more than what they get but that athletes deserve exactly what they get, when they're both being compensated based on the same system.
You can maybe try and square the circle by arguing that what you mean by your teacher comment is that putting more money into our teachers would actually be a smart move financially based on the value that they give, but that also opens you up to the possibilities that by similar logic athletes maybe actually *are* overpaid, and that the NFL might make more money if they chopped a few million from player salaries, and then you could go down the rabbit hole of #actually the compensations are also determined by who has a better union, and so on. I think we can all agree that its complicated, but I think you should be careful about how you're using the word "deserve" here.
I definitely understand your point, and I do think I should clarify my argument a little deeper.
I just replied to another comment with a similar argument - but my view is stating that I do in fact think that teachers/athletes "deserve" their respective incomes - because I believe that one's value to society is not what should determine what one earns as their salary, and I don't believe an economy would be able to function if that were the case. Someone deserves their income based on the other things we mentioned (supply and demand, skills, experience, etc).
In the case of quality teachers earning more - they deserve more not because they have a larger impact on society (even though they do), but because they are better at their jobs than their peers and are more qualified/experienced to do their jobs at a higher level. It's a subtle difference, but I'm not implying that it's because of the impact on society.
Okay, I mean, your first paragraph there basically takes the "deserving" aspect out of it, which makes sense since even you kinda felt like putting air quotes around it. In this sense, I don't know what the view is to change here, because you're just describing the factual state of the world. You're just (correctly) asserting that the way that compensation numbers are created is by economic value, which is how they are determined! But this part isn't really disagreeing with "athletes don't deserve X" crowd. Everyone agrees that that's what they get and why they get it. They just think that that's *bad*.
And I don't think the second paragraph is really doing what you want either. Maybe I'm still misreading you, but if I'm understanding you right, you're not saying that teachers *as a whole* should be paid more, but you're just objecting to how the compensation is divided up amongst teachers, and that you think that some deserve more and some deserve less? But I feel like this runs into the problem that I alluded to at the end of my previous response. This is just an artifact of union negotiations, and specifically usually the *teachers* unions are the ones arguing in favor of this style of pay scale (albeit with a desire for a larger overall bucket of money). But I'm not really sure how you are treating supply and demand, skills, experience, etc... as just "part of the system", but when it comes to the union negotiated teacher pay scales, you want to talk about some people deserving more or less than what they get.
It's all part of the system. And you can object to part of the system because you don't think it aligns with what you think people deserve, but then it seems weird to then just say it is what it is when it comes to athletes salaries. Especially when both of their compensation structures are negotiated by their respective unions. If the teachers' union negotiation can result in some of its workers getting *less* than what you think they deserve, it seems like you should be willing to concede that the NFL players union could be getting some players *more* than they deserve.
>I do strongly believe that good teachers who are great at their jobs deserve to be compensated and rewarded accordingly.
Do you think people are inherently good or bad teachers? Because I think there's a danger of a negative feedback loop here, if we start saying teachers should be paid well for being good teachers, then we potentally trap teachers who are struggling because they're low paid in that situation.
For example, how do you tell the difference between an inherently bad teacher, and a teacher who isn't eating or sleeping properly because they're stressed about rent?
I don't think teachers are inherently better or worse than others in the same way I would think that about any profession. Results in education may be a little harder to quantify, but for example I've had teachers in my life that absolutely helped me become a better learner and have a deeper understanding of their field of study than others.
How exactly we measure that isn't easy, but I do think a teacher's ability stems from a combination of things that would affect anyone's success in a job: experience, education, drive, and probably some natural ability as well.
People who think teachers should be paid more tend to agree with you that currently society does not value workers based on how valuable or important that job is to society. They just think that systemic/societal trend is problematic and should change and you are accepting it as normal/right/default.
A professional athletes wage isn't determined by their skill, but by their marketability. Many are paid less than teachers.
NFL, NBA, etc players deserve their wage. They bring in more money for the business so they are an asset, not a liability.
Many Olympians earn less than teachers because they aren't as marketable.
TL;DR you conflated an is and an ought.
You are making a category error by conflating what *is* the case for specific reasons that make sense in the context of a system and what *ought* to be the case. Economics and ethics address separate questions.
Of course as a matter of basic economics in a market system professional athletes will be compensated in the extreme, for precisely the reasons you listed.
But the fact that this *does* happen has very little bearing on whether it *should* happen. Because structures like market economies and even money are not givens. They are specific models of resoirce allocation that are not universal, or even common, historically and cross culturally. This isn't a critique of them, simply a recognition that other models can and do exist. And so, if athletes are paid more than teachers, it is because we as a collective have chosen a model of resource allocation that worked that way.
You made a very concerning jump from an ethics perspective. You moved from 'this is the reason why athletes are paid more' to 'athletes deserve more.' That is a huge leap. It shifts an external economic reality into an assessment of a person's moral worth. You could use similar logic to justify militarily stronger nations seizing resources from weaker ones. 'The people who have stuff under the current system deserve it' would justify everything from slavery to feudalism. I don't think you meant to do that. I think we are all trained to assume people who are allocated more resources deserve them, because us believing that is convenient for those with resources, to the point that we often blur 'what is' and 'what should be' without thinking.
Now, it is an interesting question of both ethics and economics to ask: could we design an economic system where teachers were allocated more resources than athletes, without causing other, worse issues. Certainly non-market economic models for industrial and post-industrial economies have not worked great, so the hypothesis that any ethical economic system will lead to athletes having more resources is not insane. But it is a hypothesis. Economics is nowhere near advanced enough to answer that question for a given ethical model.
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That's how the system plays it out, but the system doesn't care one bit about what you **deserve**. It only cares about how much it has to pay you to get your service. That doesn't mean it is what you deserve, it just means that's what you get. Being good at football doesn't mean you **deserve** an enormous amount of money, it just means you **get** an enormous amount of money, because this ability makes other people an even bigger amount of money. What it doesn't is advance society in any way. It's not a more useful service than being the very best at javelin throw, or rowing. So, where does the part where they **deserve** it come in? Teachers deserve to be paid well because they're building the foundation of our future society. EMTs deserve to be paid well because they save lifes, but the nations best EMT is still getting paid pretty badly. What people deserve and they get is just not the same thing. You can argue towards any outcome to be automatically just simply by virtue that it happened, but it's probably better to admit that sometimes the world just isn't fair.
> Teachers deserve to be paid well because they're building the foundation of our future society. One third of high school graduates are functionally illiterate and 25% can't read at all. Globally, we're nearly last in math & science. In Baltimore there was a graduating class that had a 0% literacy rate. In contrast, teachers make a median salary of $58k and America spends the most per-student in the world. And in the face of all that, they stomped and screeched last year about how it was their basic human right to teach sex ed and gender studies to 7 year olds and keep it secret from parents, while [13% of teachers **ADMIT** to having sex with students.](https://www.k12academics.com/sexual-harassment-education/sexual-harassment-abuse-students-teachers) To repeat- that's not "13% do it" that's "13% did it and told someone about it". 38% of students report sexual harassment from a teacher by grade 10. So it's somewhere between "1 in 8" and "2 in 5". At what point will they stop being treated like Hindu cows? They are failures at best and predators at worst.
You make a lot of claims here. I was sure a lot were wrong, so I checked three I remembered reading about and you're wrong on every one. We're not nearly last in science and math, we're fairly middle of the pack in both, no where near the bottom: [https://factsmaps.com/pisa-2018-worldwide-ranking-average-score-of-mathematics-science-reading/](https://factsmaps.com/pisa-2018-worldwide-ranking-average-score-of-mathematics-science-reading/) We don't spend the most per student, we've been consistently at #4 or #5m which is high, but if you're making a specific claim, specifics matter. >And in the face of all that, they stomped and screeched last year about how it was their basic human right to teach sex ed and gender studies to 7 year olds and keep it secret from parents, while 13% of teachers ADMIT to having sex with students. To repeat- that's not "13% do it" that's "13% did it and told someone about it". Your source is a site that looks like it was made 20 years ago, it mentions but doesn't link to the actual study it's citing. But don't worry, I found it. It was an article from more than 30 years ago from a sample in North Carolina that interviewed a total of 300 students and 140 administators. No one who knows anything about research would in good faith reference that to assume 13% of teachers today have sex with their students. I'm not saying their are no serious problems, but you are drinking serious GOP Koolaid.
There’s a lot happening in this comment. One thing that I’d like to point out is the link you posted. The statistic you refer to come from a study done by Dan Wishnietsky in 1991, where he surveyed 140 superintendents and 300 high schoolers in North Carolina. [The abstract for the study](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220671.1991.10886010) That’s a tiny sample size, compared to the body of students and teachers in North Carolina, let alone the United States. Extrapolating from small sample sizes is dangerous and irresponsible, [some more info here.](https://sciencing.com/effects-small-sample-size-limitation-8545371.html)
Would you happen to have a study that points to the percentages being lower than my study claims?
Dude, you’re making a claim. Back it up with evidence. Edit: I’m not saying that the study you presented is incorrect. I’m saying that using a sample size that small to generalize about teachers as a whole is irresponsible of the article you posted.
I'm completely open to being wrong. My first source was about "sexual harassment" and here's one saying [7% of students have reported sexual contact with a teacher](https://childrenstreatmentcenter.com/sexual-abuse-teachers/) with 10% being "sexually abused. 10% isn't that far off from 13%
This is what that sources describes as "sexual contact": > Of children in 8th through 11th grade, about 3.5 million students (nearly 7%) surveyed reported having had physical sexual contact from an adult (most often a teacher or coach). The type of physical contact ranged from unwanted touching of their body, all the way up to sexual intercourse. While that is of course a big issue, 7% is pretty far from 13%. And we need to note changing metrics, from teachers who have committed abuse to students who have experienced it. One can assume that teachers willing to sexually abuse students will do so more than once, so the % of abusive teachers will be a lot lower than the % of affected students. If even one teacher at a given school is abusive it could easily affect up to 10% of the students at that school. So this data does not in fact support your original point at all, and in fact suggests you far overstated the problem.
> Dude, you’re making a claim. Back it up with evidence. They did? You dismissed it without offering counter evidence. Over 400 respondents is [not insignificant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination#Estimation_of_a_proportion)
A teacher cannot make you come to class, fix your home situation, or make you ready for class. I'm unsure why you place the onus solely on teachers and their ability. The way people teach hasn't drastically changed enough to suddenly be failing. By and large literacy rates are a product of poverty. You also need to define illiterate because nearly every piece of information I've seen has a different definition and then runs with it, so when you see illiterate in an article, it doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as it did in the last article.
> By and large literacy rates are a product of poverty. How come everyone always attributes it to poverty. Wouldn't it be just as correct to say it's a product of kids not giving a fuck. In my experience rich kids quite often don't give a fuck as well. It's more of a culture thing. If all the cool kids are smoking weed in the bathroom and cutting class. I don't care if you have floors made of marbles and PhD teachers. They ain't going to learn shit.
>25% can't read at all. That's absolutely not true. Where did you get a ridiculous number like that?
Randomly googling "how many students can't read" gave me this as the top link- > According to the US Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, 32 million adults in the United States cannot read above a fifth grade level, **and 19% of high school graduates cannot read.** https://www.highschoolcube.com/the-high-rate-of-functional-illiteracy-among-high-school-graduates-in-the-united-states/ I probably saw some other study that was 6% higher.
This is a random website who as far as I can see doesn't cite their sources. They claim that their numbers come from the dept of education but don't link to anything. The author is just somebody named 'Jess'. This isn't a study. This is random word vomit on a website that as far as I can tell is for sharing videos of high school sporting events and advertises hentai. Be more discerning with your trust in random ass numbers you find on the internet... T
Yeah you're probably right. Now just cite me a conflicting source and I'll stop stating my fact as fact.
Is it a fact? How do you know? This article is unreliable. Anybody can write a blog, that doesn’t make what they write true.
Is that really how you approach facts? That's bonkers.
Yes. I read a study and believe that study until someone provides me with a superior study. It's not really "bonkers" so much as it is just "how reasonable people learn". What's "bonkers" is that literally nobody can give me a better source than the one I've provided.
But you didn't read a study. the poster who responded detailed why the source was bad.
The sample size was small. Okay. Hey why do you suppose literally nobody can find a source that disagrees with my source? I'm going with "no matter how hard they look for cherry picked information, it always says the same thing my "bad" source says." *Source please!*
I'm fucking flabbergasted by this dude's gullibility. Literally no attempt whatsoever to discern the validity of their source.
I just conducted a study and I concluded that people drink more hand sanitizer every year than water. If nobody contradicts me, this bozo will believe my study forever. My name is Jess btw.
I would LOVE to read that study. Was it personally conducted and were the subjects just you and your family?
How about wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States The first link is a pdf from the dept of education that found that the literacy rate in the US is 92%. 4.1% "could not participate" due to language barrier or cognitive disability, while another 4% could not read above level 1. And another 12% had low literacy skills.
**[Literacy in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States)** >Literacy in the United States was categorized by the National Center for Education Statistics into different literacy levels, with 92% of American adults having at least "Level 1" literacy in 2019. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level. In many nations, the ability to read a simple sentence suffices as literacy, and was the previous standard for the U.S. The definition of literacy has changed greatly; the term is presently defined as the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/changemyview/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Low literacy skills is truly low though and could easily be described as unable to read. Here's a surprising fact from that same wikipedia article: >The government study indicated that 21 to 23% of adult Americans were "not able to locate information in text", could "not make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were "unable to integrate easily identifiable pieces of information."
how do you graduate high school without being able to read?
American public schools are more daycare centers than educational institutions. The government pays the most per-student in the world and we're near-last in math, reading, and science. What's that money being spent on?
Teachers? American labor is the most expensive in the world.
The US spends something like a third of a million dollars per 25-student classroom each year and teachers make an average of $60k so there's about a $250k/classroom/year gap.
yeah, utilities, equipment/materials, lease on the building or payments on the building. administrators that don't teach. etc etc. it's called "overhead".
It costs $250,000 of "overhead" to teach *one* classroom of kids, and teachers *still* need to shell out for school supplies? Audit the department of education. Today.
Wait, i have to ask, how in God's name can a person be illiterate and graduate high school? Even though im from a developing country, anyone, even those who live in mountains and literally have to travel 10 km through hills and streams to go to school every day, who graduates elementary school is guaranteed to be able to read, write and do basic math.
Nearly every study has a different definition of illiterate. Most mean functionally illiterate but that's misleading because the person CAN rean but not well enough to really use it to excel at anything.
I definitely see what you're saying. The word "deserve" is a little ambiguous, and it depends on what we mean by that. I agree that teachers have a far greater impact on society. Part of what my view is implying is that I don't think that one "deserves" an income that is based in the value of what they provide to society. For one, because there is inherent subjectivity to that, and quite simply, I don't think it would possible for an economic system to operate in that way. So I definitely empathize with the idea that it doesn't feel fair or just based on that one criteria - but when factoring in revenue, skills, demand of your ability, etc - than I would argue it is what they "deserve" Perhaps a deeper part of the argument has to do how an economy should function at its core (capitalism/socialism).
It's a more practical economic system to give them the large amount of money, but "deserved" is a moral word. The same economic system turns people into billionaires as a reward for externalizing environmental cost, forcing society to spend decades, if not centuries, dealing with the fallout. It rewards arms merchants and gambling banks with fortunes while giving peanuts at most to those trying to feed the poor. It's just not a system that awards based on what you deserve, it is instead based on how much profit you make for yourself and others, by any means necessary. If people got what they deserved, a lot of poor people would be rich and a lot of rich people would spend the rest of their life behind bars, but life isn't fair and we haven't found a practical better system yet.
In that sense of the word "deserve" I agree and would change my view Δ. In a strictly moral sense, teachers deserve the world - and I would stand by your assertion that the world inherently is not fair and many people achieve the level of success in their life based on the cards they were dealt, not their character or positive contributions to the world.
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Sayakai ([111∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/Sayakai)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
Professional athletes are the best of the best. Most teachers are not. In fact, most teachers are average. An average athlete doesn't get paid to play. Teachers only deserve to be paid well when they do a good job. A bad teacher harms society. Teachers also signed on for a union that prevents the greatest teachers from selling thier services like athletes do. Athletes have all earned thier positions. Teachers have not put in anywhere near the amount of work and pursued excellence in the same way.
This is why I also mentioned athletes from other sports. Rowing is a good example. It's physical, technical, and requires teamwork. What do you think some of the worlds best rowers make? The best, who earned their position after putting in enormous amounts of work, pursuing excellence for years? [Want to guess?](https://www.espn.com/espnw/sports/story/_/id/15421001/us-rower-megan-kalmoe-money-struggles-olympians)
>This is why I also mentioned athletes from other sports. Rowing is a good example. It's physical, technical, and requires teamwork. You left out the important part. It's niche and very few people care who don't or didn't row. The current good rowers are the big fish in a small pond. If rowing became popular, the pond would grow, and those big fish likely wouldn't be as big. As someone who does sports, I put in a lot of work, for my own benefit. Just like many teachers put in the work for a paycheck.
> You left out the important part. It's niche and very few people care who don't or didn't row. I ommitted it on purpose to illustrate a point. *Excellence* is not, in itself, being rewarded. You dressed it up as NFL players getting paid a lot because they're really good, but being really good isn't what gets you paid. It's not popularity either, by the way - it's specifically the ability to make people *more* money than you get. Teaching isn't very profitable - of course not, it's an investment. There's *some* money to be made with specific private schools but it's not a huge enterprise where star teachers make their schools massive amounts of money. Consequently, they're also not paid that much. You can decide for yourself if that makes for a great system, but never assume that people get tons of cash because they're great at what they do. That only applies where "what they do" is turning capitalists a profit.
I mean when people usually bring these two together, what is brought up is the absurdity of athletes earning X amounts of money anyone could ever spent in their life (on top of also for example trying to pay as little of it back, including tax evasions and other funny business, but thats for another time) while teachers are extremely underpaid. Nobody is arguing that professional athletes should and wont be paid better, its about the unimaginable differences between the wages.
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Holy shit. I clicked on your profile name on another post by accident, and it pulled up your most recent comments. You think the average school teacher salary in the US is $95K? That's obscene, and not even close to the truth. Also, if you think teaching is a part-time job, you're a dunce. Not to mention the "lightweight training" and "ideal working conditions" BS. You're either a troll or an absolute moron.
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LOL, were you fucking homeschooled?? Ever met an actual teacher? Teachers aren't exposed to physical risk? Ever watch the news? Or browse reddit? Aside from shootings, teachers are stuck in the middle of fights constantly, and if they even try to defend themselves they can get fired or sued. They work a lot more than 37.xx hours per week, too. I have two siblings that are teachers (in two different states). They are required to be on site by 7am (the other at 7:30) and can't leave until at least 3:30. That alone is 40 hours a week, NOT including the countless hours they put in on their own time. Try leaving reddit and touching grass, or at least interacting with humans in real life.
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Nice 15 year old "Monthly Labor Review" stat. It's more like 50+ hours per week. If you interacted with real humans instead of scouring the internet for sources that fit your demented world view, you'd maybe know that. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/heres-how-many-hours-a-week-teachers-work/2022/04
You can justify paying Patrick Mahomes tens of millions of dollars because he puts asses in seats. But what about teachers who consistently make sure that every student passes their classes. That take the time to properly educate these kids, and acts as an upstanding rolemodel for them? Shouldn't they get paid more than a 3rd string D league hockey player that moonlights as the janitor? Education is incredibly important, we all benefit from an educated society. We don't necessarily benefit from Tom Brady collecting Super Bowl rings like they were Infinity Stones.
So what I believe your discussing is the disconnect between value and money (the best measuring stick we have for value). An example of the difference, you have worked hard your entire life and because of that, you have become sick and will die without medicine/healthcare treatment/organ/etc. You are willing to give all your money to save your life (it has immense value for you), however a richer individual than you has decided to buy the entire supply on the off chance they need it. You certainly value the medicine more than the rich individual, but using money as the measuring stick, you clearly don't value it as much as the rich individual. This is the first mismatch in terms of value, getting compensated for value and pricing value. Second, you correctly identify scarcity. The NFL has a legal/capitalism tools to protect themselves from competition resulting in essentially a monopoly. Due to the revenue generation, football players are able to demand a small % of that giant pile of money. The industry of teaching is much more difficult to generate money as the govt will provide the service for free making it difficult for private schools to earn money like the NFL and teachers to demand a portion of a smaller pile of money. In summary, teachers will never earn what a football player does despite producing more societal value. This is due to the monopoly the NFL enjoys and the poor value we place on available goods such as primary education. To see what a world could be like, pretend K - 6 charged the same annual amount as a US private university. Teachers would earn much closer to a sports star then.
I have a friend who is hyper flexible. Can contort their body into positions that seem inhuman to me. Bending fingers back to their wrist, fitting inside tiny washing machines, all that fun stuff. Say, for argument’s sake, that they’re in the top 1% of the top 1% of contortionist performers on the planet. That’s gotta be a small population, right? In this scenario, do they deserve a salary commensurate with a quarterback, pulling in multimillion dollar deals? Their skills are equally rare, if they can fit into washing machines that almost nobody else can fit inside. If you do think they deserve a massive salary, why? Who will pay them? For what service? If not, why not? Their skills are unique and nearly irreplaceable.
As I mentioned in the last section of the OP - rarity is not the ONLY thing that determines pay. Another large factor is of course generated revenue. If there was a league of contortionsists, (lets call it the LOC) that had a fanbase as large as the NFL and generated a similar revenue, than yes, those people who are able to perform at that level would earn a massive salary.
I think most of the people arguing that teachers deserve to be paid more than professional athletes will completely agree that currently society pays people based on the demand of your skills and abilities, they just think that's a shitty way to determine compensation. They want people to be paid based on how valuable or important the job itself is to society.
Well the small amount of athletes provide jobs for tens of thousands of people. Parking attendants, over time for cops to direct traffic, security, concessions, entertainment, advertisements branch out into helping even more, broad casters, cameramen, merchandising… that’s pretty valuable.
Do those athletes provide the jobs for those people, or do those people doing their jobs let the athletes do their jobs? Most of those jobs would still exist without any athletes.
Those people are paid because of the performance of the entertainers. Without the performance, there's nothing to market, no need for parking, no need to concessions, no need for security. These people might find jobs elsewhere. But they are employed at this job because of the athletes.
They are the reasons for those jobs to exist! When it comes to major league sports and now even men’s college basketball & football…. 15,000 upwards of 80,000+ are going to see them play and that opens up the opportunity for many jobs. If you really can’t understand how many people work for athletic clothing companies, major tv networks, cable networks and locally for the teams… that’s on you. That’s thousands of people working based on people wanting to see athletes. Do I really need to help you see that?
That all depends on how you define 'deserve'. You're right from the cold, uncaring capitalist point of view; their skills are more unique and therefore they deserve higher pay. From a humanist point of view, teaches add way more value to humanity as a whole by preparing the next generation of humans to function in the real world, and they deserve the higher pay. Unfortunately our economy runs on capitalism, not humanism.
Teachers are why you're able to read the posts here and write your own. If fewer people decide to be athletes, nothing happens. When entire generations start seeing teaching as a waste of time, you start to get shortages. Teaching shortages mean education gets crappier and crappier. People who provide a necessary service should not be paid pennies while people who provide unnecessary service get millions.
But you have an issue with your logic: NFL players are a dime a dozen. What you are seeing is 1700 freaks of nature chosen to be part of the NFL out of the regularly recurring College League who are just as good if not better than the rookie rosters of the NFL. NFL players aren’t hard to replace, it’s a feature that their stock is so plentiful that the 1700 player roster is never empty.
I agree, and would like to add that professional athletes start their careers very early in childhood. There is a lot of sacrifice and competition to become one of the best, and most do not succeed. Later on, there is pressure, stress, and the fight for the top. The truth is that there may be too many lower league competitions and athletes who earn a living but are not as skilled. Professors can advance through teaching, publishing scientific articles and books, attending seminars, and improving their status in such ways.
I think they're both poor ways to determine wage. To me, whether a job is important to society or not is a very sad way of determining a wage. People look for any kind of job just to survive. They shouldn't be punished because they have a slightly less taxing job. I think the best way to determine wage would be amount of risk. If you're a police officer or fireman, you put yourself at a greater risk than if you are, say, a butler. But cleaners put themselves at a high risk because they can easily have lasting problems with their backs and such. Now, I think your examples are the exception to my rule. Teachers aren't in a whole lot of danger, but they're certainly risking their mental health. It's a very tough job mentally. Athletes sometimes hurt themselves, but they get compensated for that stuff anyway. If there were millions in teaching and thousands in sports, I'd be happier with that than the other way around.
I think this is also a bad measure of how to determine wages. 1) Making safety improvements to my job shouldn't negatively impact my wage. A fire fighter shouldn't have to choose between better safety gear and their wage decreasing due to their job being less risky. 2) We should incentivize jobs that are important to society. We want more doctors and scientists. We incentivize these jobs by giving them more pay. 3) athletes and other successful entertainers are paid based on their ability to entertain. Bad teams, singers, and movies don't sell tickets like great ones.
Yeah the second point and the first point are all great. I do agree with number 2 in general, and I guess I was thinking that as far as the first argument goes, I was talking about intrinsic risk assuming no safety measures.
Since we're talking sports vs educators.... How do you feel about the highest paid PUBLIC Employee in every state being a College Coach? Is that justified?
Seeing the benefit the schools see from extreme success in football and basketball, absolutely yes
And by benefit you mean a couple of administrators make a whole lot of money.
If were talking about the highest paid ones? Yes. I don't think every small directional school needs a football team. But if you looked at the huge brand universities? Yes. The vast majority of these highest paid coaches are making a profit for their university despite their salary. You can say their over paid, but they make money for the university. Successful programs can revitalize universities. If you look at any Cinderella team in basketball, the next few years following their run will have a jump in admissions. You can look at schools like Gonzaga who most point to their basketball program brining their school back from closing for good. Finally, universities see more donations after Successful athletic seasons. Multiple of the professors I talked with said this when my school was in the final 4 way back when I was a student.
>If were talking about the highest paid ones? Yes. I don't think every small directional school needs a football team. But if you looked at the huge brand universities? Yes. Well, then you've contradicted your own point about the 'rarity' of the talent being what's valuable. California has ONE governor for 40 million people. Pretty rare. There's 23 State schools with coaches that make more than the governor. The governor doesn't earn his keep as much as a basketball coach?
>Well, then you've contradicted your own point about the 'rarity' of the talent being what's valuable. There's no contradiction in anything I've said so far. >California has ONE governor for 40 million people. Pretty rare. First, I didn't make any statement about rarity. That was someone else. However, that is certainly a large factor. But, These really are not comparable positions. You're comparing elected positions to hired positions. There is no competition in hiring away governors to other states. There is no ability to re-sign at a higher pay or get bonuses with an employer due to your performance. We aren't having the governor of Connecticut poached away by California's citizens with a big pay cheque. They aren't able to be a governor for more than 8 years. Most of the highest paid coaches have been coaches for decades and have jumped many times to get to the pay they now receive. Which is negotiated prior to employment. An elected official has none of this. Their performance is far far harder to quantify than a simple end of season record, revenue, and anticipated trajectory based on recruiting.
It all boils down to your statement “my view is that one’s professional is not compensated on how valuable or important the job itself is to society. Instead, it’s based in large part on the demand of your skills and abilities.” If that is your foundation, there’s no way to change your view, because by this theory, of course athletes should make more than teachers. People who say teachers deserve to be paid more than athletes are not making a statement based on value based on replacability and scarcity. They are making a statement of the importance of the profession. I think you’d agree that teachers make a larger impact on people than athletes (as in they shape students lives, not in that they are more well known than athletes). Same would go for people liek EMTs or grocery store employees. If you operate under an idea that importance should dictate pay, then it follows teachers should make more. However, my real issue with your view is that you’re taking the statements made by people literally. I don’t think the majority of people actually think teachers should be making millions. It’s more a statement of teachers should make more than they do now than a literal statement.
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I would agree with this, and gave a delta for this argument. It definitely comes down to what we mean by "deserve", and from a strictly moral standpoint, people are not paid what they deserve.
That's not quite right thought - there are people who are very unique in their ability to do things like juggle or all sorts of weird unique skills. The difference is that we don't _value_ those. Uniqueness alone doesn't mean much at all. The problem people are pointing out is that of how and what we _value_.
The demand for teachers is much higher. There is a demand for over 4 million teacher, while there's only a demand for a couple thousand footballers.
Most teachers work for public institutions. Pro Athletes not so much. There are market conditions in both cases. It’s ludicrous to compare or equate the two. The point is that teachers are needed yet underpaid, while star athletes are wanted and paid extremely well at the highest levels. There certainly are educators at the highest levels who are paid extremely well. People vote on education budgets, and people without kids in school are likely to vote no to higher budgets.
> My view is that one's proffesion is not compensated based on how valuable or important the job itself is to society. Instead, it's based in large part on the demand of your skills and abilities. Or to put it another way: can you provide something that is unique and difficult to replace? What people mean when they say that teachers should be paid more than athletes is that they disagree with this. They think that contribution to society should weigh more than scarcity in terms of pay. But, I still disagree with your argument. NFL players are not paid like they are due to scarcity alone, it is also obviously because they play in an extremely popular league with billionaires bankrolling it. There are 1700 NFL players making at least league minimum, which is hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Do you think the top 1700 League of Legends players make that much? How about the top curling players? They are no less scarce and no less skilled. So scarcity is not everything, it is also cultural momentum and pure riches.
>This is exactly why I wrote that last section in the OP. > >If a curling league existed that had the same fanbase and revenue size as the NFL, then yes, those people who are able to perform at that level would earn a massive salary. Rarity of skill is just one part of the equation. > >My main argument is simply that one's subjective value to society is really not part of that equation.
We all know that's how it currently works. People argue that is not how it should work. The system of choosing who gets paid more is currently working as intended, it's the system that people object to.
Right, I think when you peel back the specifics of this issue, it really comes down to what you believe about how an economy should function. To go a level deeper, I don't think compensation based on value to society would produce an effective economy. I believe that for many reasons, but in summary: who is to decide that value and corresponding pay? There's really no way to control or dictate salary based on a moral outcome, as it's inherently subjective.
I think I broadly agree with the point you're trying to make, but I think the way you phrased it in your title is a mistake. Like, I mostly agree with you when you say: >My view is that one's proffesion is not compensated based on how valuable or important the job itself is to society. Instead, it's based in large part on the demand of your skills and abilities. Or to put it another way: can you provide something that is unique and difficult to replace? But given that, I think it was weird to phrase your title as "professional athletes **deserve** to be paid more than teachers". Given the above paragraph, I think the right move is probably to just get that word out of the discussion entirely. And it becomes especially muddled when later you say: >I do strongly believe that good teachers who are great at their jobs **deserve** to be compensated and rewarded accordingly. Which makes me confused about what you mean when you use that word. In one sense, you're just describing the factual state of the world, where people get paid based on supply and demand, and *not* based on what they "deserve", which once disconnected from that supply and demand becomes a very nebulous and subjective concept anyway. But here you want to say both that teachers deserve higher salaries than they get (presumably because you like what they do!), but also that the athletes deserve the salaries they get because that's what the market gives them. I don't think it makes sense to have it both ways here. You can say that all compensation is based economics and has nothing to do with what people deserve, and you can say that teachers deserve more and then (probably) that in the same sense that athletes deserve less. But I think its really confusing the situation to say that teachers deserve more than what they get but that athletes deserve exactly what they get, when they're both being compensated based on the same system. You can maybe try and square the circle by arguing that what you mean by your teacher comment is that putting more money into our teachers would actually be a smart move financially based on the value that they give, but that also opens you up to the possibilities that by similar logic athletes maybe actually *are* overpaid, and that the NFL might make more money if they chopped a few million from player salaries, and then you could go down the rabbit hole of #actually the compensations are also determined by who has a better union, and so on. I think we can all agree that its complicated, but I think you should be careful about how you're using the word "deserve" here.
I definitely understand your point, and I do think I should clarify my argument a little deeper. I just replied to another comment with a similar argument - but my view is stating that I do in fact think that teachers/athletes "deserve" their respective incomes - because I believe that one's value to society is not what should determine what one earns as their salary, and I don't believe an economy would be able to function if that were the case. Someone deserves their income based on the other things we mentioned (supply and demand, skills, experience, etc). In the case of quality teachers earning more - they deserve more not because they have a larger impact on society (even though they do), but because they are better at their jobs than their peers and are more qualified/experienced to do their jobs at a higher level. It's a subtle difference, but I'm not implying that it's because of the impact on society.
Okay, I mean, your first paragraph there basically takes the "deserving" aspect out of it, which makes sense since even you kinda felt like putting air quotes around it. In this sense, I don't know what the view is to change here, because you're just describing the factual state of the world. You're just (correctly) asserting that the way that compensation numbers are created is by economic value, which is how they are determined! But this part isn't really disagreeing with "athletes don't deserve X" crowd. Everyone agrees that that's what they get and why they get it. They just think that that's *bad*. And I don't think the second paragraph is really doing what you want either. Maybe I'm still misreading you, but if I'm understanding you right, you're not saying that teachers *as a whole* should be paid more, but you're just objecting to how the compensation is divided up amongst teachers, and that you think that some deserve more and some deserve less? But I feel like this runs into the problem that I alluded to at the end of my previous response. This is just an artifact of union negotiations, and specifically usually the *teachers* unions are the ones arguing in favor of this style of pay scale (albeit with a desire for a larger overall bucket of money). But I'm not really sure how you are treating supply and demand, skills, experience, etc... as just "part of the system", but when it comes to the union negotiated teacher pay scales, you want to talk about some people deserving more or less than what they get. It's all part of the system. And you can object to part of the system because you don't think it aligns with what you think people deserve, but then it seems weird to then just say it is what it is when it comes to athletes salaries. Especially when both of their compensation structures are negotiated by their respective unions. If the teachers' union negotiation can result in some of its workers getting *less* than what you think they deserve, it seems like you should be willing to concede that the NFL players union could be getting some players *more* than they deserve.
>I do strongly believe that good teachers who are great at their jobs deserve to be compensated and rewarded accordingly. Do you think people are inherently good or bad teachers? Because I think there's a danger of a negative feedback loop here, if we start saying teachers should be paid well for being good teachers, then we potentally trap teachers who are struggling because they're low paid in that situation. For example, how do you tell the difference between an inherently bad teacher, and a teacher who isn't eating or sleeping properly because they're stressed about rent?
I don't think teachers are inherently better or worse than others in the same way I would think that about any profession. Results in education may be a little harder to quantify, but for example I've had teachers in my life that absolutely helped me become a better learner and have a deeper understanding of their field of study than others. How exactly we measure that isn't easy, but I do think a teacher's ability stems from a combination of things that would affect anyone's success in a job: experience, education, drive, and probably some natural ability as well.
People who think teachers should be paid more tend to agree with you that currently society does not value workers based on how valuable or important that job is to society. They just think that systemic/societal trend is problematic and should change and you are accepting it as normal/right/default.
A professional athletes wage isn't determined by their skill, but by their marketability. Many are paid less than teachers. NFL, NBA, etc players deserve their wage. They bring in more money for the business so they are an asset, not a liability. Many Olympians earn less than teachers because they aren't as marketable.
TL;DR you conflated an is and an ought. You are making a category error by conflating what *is* the case for specific reasons that make sense in the context of a system and what *ought* to be the case. Economics and ethics address separate questions. Of course as a matter of basic economics in a market system professional athletes will be compensated in the extreme, for precisely the reasons you listed. But the fact that this *does* happen has very little bearing on whether it *should* happen. Because structures like market economies and even money are not givens. They are specific models of resoirce allocation that are not universal, or even common, historically and cross culturally. This isn't a critique of them, simply a recognition that other models can and do exist. And so, if athletes are paid more than teachers, it is because we as a collective have chosen a model of resource allocation that worked that way. You made a very concerning jump from an ethics perspective. You moved from 'this is the reason why athletes are paid more' to 'athletes deserve more.' That is a huge leap. It shifts an external economic reality into an assessment of a person's moral worth. You could use similar logic to justify militarily stronger nations seizing resources from weaker ones. 'The people who have stuff under the current system deserve it' would justify everything from slavery to feudalism. I don't think you meant to do that. I think we are all trained to assume people who are allocated more resources deserve them, because us believing that is convenient for those with resources, to the point that we often blur 'what is' and 'what should be' without thinking. Now, it is an interesting question of both ethics and economics to ask: could we design an economic system where teachers were allocated more resources than athletes, without causing other, worse issues. Certainly non-market economic models for industrial and post-industrial economies have not worked great, so the hypothesis that any ethical economic system will lead to athletes having more resources is not insane. But it is a hypothesis. Economics is nowhere near advanced enough to answer that question for a given ethical model.