| Dulfite said: Public servants (educators, cops, post office workers, etc) are the people that should get wage increases, not fast food workers. If minimum wage goes up, and the salary of those of us (I'm a teacher) doesn't increase as well, this entire country will collapse. $15 an hour is more than I made as a paraprofessional (which requires 60 credit hours in a school). How motivated will employees be when someone is flipping handburgers for more money than they make? Minimum wage jobs are intended for high schoolers and young people trying to pay for college. They weren't meant for 45 year old high school drop outs. Now, if those people get those jobs that is fine (I have no issue with them). If they wish they had better jobs then they should try to better themselves and get one or they should have in the first place. I have no issue with, privately, helping and loving those in need. I have issues with the government forcing businesses to pay someone more money to do a task that requires the brain of a middle schooler than places pay people that have jobs that actually require college credits or a degree. Our priorities in this country are insane. I mean, a baby sitter could make $20 an hour per kid. I deal with hundreds of high school kids that I'm supposed to observe, keep safe, and teach while they curse, listen to music despite being told not to, get into fights, bring weapons to school, do drugs, do sexual activity on campus, are constantly on their cell phones, and on and on and I make less an hour than someone who sits and watches Netflix with a 4 year old while they take a nap. By the way, I love my job and I love that I'm in an area where I can try to make an impact on people's lives. I truly do feel like I'm building a rapport with these kids and I hope so much that I can help them in their lives, even if just a little. I'm just saying that we pay tons of people a good amount of money for jobs that require very little skill and those of us that are extremely skilled at our jobs and went to college and worked our buts off (while we make more) it isn't proportional at all if you take $15 an hour into consideration for minimum wage. |
The average starting salary for a teacher in the U.S is about $34,000(which is close to the individual median of all incomes.) That comes out to something like 23-30$ /hr depending on the average number of hours said teacher works per day for 9 months. Considering teaching is a full time job with benefits and armageddon proof job security(tenure ) while babysitting has none of these things. It is not very comparable. How much people are worth to their employer depends on how much productivity or of what quality services they can perform. Of course public jobs are not as subjected to market mechanisms and consequently a lot of money is wasted on things other than teaching labor, which also do not constitute productive capital. For that reason teachers should take it up with school administrations and not the taxpayer, if they don't feel they are paid fairly. As it is now the U.S spends. more on education per kid than any other country. But then the standards of becoming a teacher are also much lower in most U.S states than other countries, with PhD's and Masters degrees being quite common among secondary school educators in other countries, whilst many teachers in the U.S were in the bottom half of their respective subjects (especially in stem fields.) I mean the unions representing police, teachers, etc are some of the most powerful and have gotten benefits which private workers envy, on top of an average salary. What kind of salaries do starting teachers want? Something comparable to doctors, engineers or programmers?
