Ouch. So much things that are wrong in here.

1. if you lived in the middle ages you had no choice to become a blacksmith, you would've just become what your father was in about 95% of all the cases.

2. Even then you HAD to go for a long, long apprenticeship to actually be able and allowed to do your job. You learned that while being taught by a master, overlooked by a guild. Which actually is a kind of school system.

3. The apprenticeship is still used in Germany. You normally do it after you finished school and you work fulltime with an exception of like 1 week per month, where you go to a public " job" school on your specific occupational field where it's made sure, that you really get the knowledge. This actually replaces lots of jobs for which you go to college to in english speaking countries. University here is just for the sciences. This system is actually really efficent and got Germany not only some off the highest quality, but also one of the top productivity rate worldwide. But without public teachers ensuring this it wouldn't work.

4. Homeschooling: Once again, if your parents are religious extremists, I doubt that you reach the same level of education in general knowledge. On the other hand that's a very bad example, because you can't compare really committed parents to regular ones. But: what did your parents learn, when they went to school? Knowledge of the world DOUBLES in 10 years. My parents i.e. can't even speak english. So how can they teach me that (Not even talking about French and Latin which I can speak/understand as well)? Teachers usually have a higher education standard than the average home schooling parent and they are paid to keep them self educated.

In 1953 the US started running education at the federal level. Before that it was run either at the state level, or more localized. It was considered a state issue, so each state did it a little differently.

Education was a lot better back then. Today, in the sate I live in, we collect about 20k per student enrolled. I am not against that huge sum of money, but think of the education that could buy if you had a more efficient system to spend it in. The top private schools don't cost that much.

What i find funny about that... and no offense to you being a teacher.

California has the highest average salary for a teacher.

60K not counting benefits.  So it's kind of a catch 22.  If the teachers got paid less, the school would get paid more.

Cleveland City schools are some of the worst in Ohio.  Their teachers make nearly 100K when you count salary and benefits... and that's just the ones that would be cut first.

The worst schools often seem to be in places where the teachers get paid best.

This is an odd situation don't you think?

The problem with that comparison is that the top private schools still don't have the high needs that public schools have, especially in inner-city schools.

@donathos: I wouldn't bother. Anyone claiming to know that "Most of the jobs that require the same amount of education are really a lot harder" without teaching before simply has no idea what they're talking about in this regard.

Most classrooms that are innercity share the issues that you have said, but usually to a much lesser extreme. Even taking away from all of that, just dealing with the academics alone is a difficult task. Teaching to 35 fourteen year olds (in one class, about 150 in total), each having completely different learning abilities, attitudes, priorities, and support at home as well as at school is an incredibly difficult thing to do. I'll admit, I'm not the greatest at it yet, it takes times, there are several changes the teacher needs to make about themselves as well. A jobs' difficultly cannot purely be measured upon the 'meatiness' of the material you are dealing with.

So, Kasz, I ask you again. What, exactly, makes microbiologists' job 'harder' or more 'tough' than a teachers? What qualifies you to make such a judgment?

My response to both questions is:

1. I have no idea which is harder; and
2. I'm not, as I haven't been a microbiologist at any point in my life

I get the feeling people think Capitalists are cold heartless bastards. We are not. We care about all people as much as Socialists do, we just find our approach better for all involved. Here is an example of something smaller, that should illustrate my point.

I used to work an a restaurant when I was going through school. This was a large place, with good high quality food. In the state it was in when I worked there, they probably brought in 3 million a year gross. This restaurant was also part of a big chain. I am not sure the exact amount, but let's say the owner wanted to spend a total of 10% gross for his managers. In my restaurant, we had 5. One general, and 4 assistants.

The way the system was setup, is the general made a lot more then the rest. He made 140k, while the other for made 40k (for a total of 300k, or 10%). Also, General managers in this chain were only recruited from within. The deal was, everyone had to take the 40k a year job, and work harder then the rest to get the 140k a year job. It was setup that way on purpose, so the managers would work harder so they could get the really high paying job.

Now, a socialist would think, “if all 5 people were doing the same basic job, pay them all the same”. Why pay the GM so much more then the rest. The reason is output. If there was no reward for busting your ass, people would not do it. If they all made 60K, why work hard enough to become GM's.

Here's the real problem... if they were not working so hard to get that job, the quality of the work they did do would be less. If those 5 did not work hard at hiring the right people, buying the best food, building the right marketing campaigns, filling in for cooks or wait staff because they were short, making sure the bathrooms were clean, greeting customers to make sure there experience was tip notch, and so on, the business would have suffered. If they were not working so hard, the restaurant might have only brought in 1.5 million a year.

If the owner is only paying 10% of gross for there salaries, and now business has dropped to half because the restaurant is not what it used to be, he can only afford to pay each manager 30K a year.

So while they are now all “fair” by a socialists standards, every one of them loses income. Not only do they make less, any chance of becoming the guy who makes a lot is gone. There future is set.

These are the reasons Capitalists feel the poor are much better off in a capitalistic society, then a socialistic one. It has nothing to do with not liking the poor, and everything to do with wanting more for them.

The college work alone is much harder... most people... even with college degrees could not get through the bachelors program for microbiology... let alone harder the latter programs.

Less people are qualified to be them.

Do you not think the school would be less difficult to work at if that extra money went towards fixing the schools?

Ok, so the amount of study and cognitive ability may need to be greater in order to study microbiology, I'll give you that. But how does that necessarily encompass the entire job? I don't suppose you mean to say that whatever program is more difficult to make it through in university will always be the harder job? That'd be a gross oversimplification.

Again, does that necessarily make it the harder job? What kind of education would you need to become a CEO of a Fortune 500 company? Compare that to the education of a microbiologist. Is it simple enough to say that it's easier to study one program than the other so one job is more difficult?

Many things play into the difficulty of a job. Not just the core content of what your job may consist of.

It does make it a harder job though. 

Less people could be microbiologists.

The less people that can do something... the harder the job it is.

I mean... if only one person in the world was qualfied to become a quantum engineer who built stuff out of Quantum particles...

His job would be the hardest in the world... even if for him it was as easy as tieing his shoes.

There are other factors sure.... but if the base requirmenets in one category outweigh another by a substnatial amount... it's a lot harder to do it just based on the fact that not as many people can.