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Comment by hacking_again | Hacker News Reader

All of it? None of it? Teachers themselves don't add value, teachers enable value addition.

I mean, obviously everyone adds value (from janitors up to doctors). And my person view is that all jobs should be compensated at the same hourly rate. But is there anything special about teachers? Like if they all quit society would go to hell, but that’s true of garbagemen and road workers too. The question is, does it matter who does the job?

Oh no, I meant teachers in general, i.e. the ones who teach. I guess broadly there's direct and indirect value adders, each group needs the other.

>And my person view is that all jobs should be compensated at the same hourly rate.

What? Care to elaborate?

I think the economy should compensate people based on factors they have control over, not ones they don’t. Someone who was born smart shouldn’t be better off for his luck. Your can choose how much you work. Maybe you can choose to do things like get an education (but not in our system where that is gated by standardized tests).

That doesn't equate to the same hourly rate though. Different jobs have different demands. In different roles I've been both lead engineer and painted fences. If the pay was the same I would probably paint fences and write code in my spare time.

Did you chose to have the aptitude to write code? Why should a person who can’t write code but can paint fences get rewarded less for giving up an hour of their limited time on earth than someone who can code?

I'm not saying current wages are fairly calibrated, but some work is actually more physically and/or mentally stressful per hour, and some work requires more training. Under your system, how do you prevent people from avoiding difficult work and/or work that requires extensive training? Central planning?

I may not have chosen to have the aptitude to write code, but I did choose to go to college to better learn how to do it. I also chose to work very hard in my industry to advance. Had this come with zero financial rewards I probably wouldn't have done those things.

Do you actually believe this or are you just saying something striking to illustrate an underlying principle?

> Do you actually believe this or are you just saying something striking to illustrate an underlying principle?

It’s where I get if I’m thinking about moral justice instead of incentives/the economy. I’m not saying my proposal is workable. It’s just my observation that the last decade has been a tale of two cities for millenials. My friends who are “good at math” have been living in a different economy from everyone else.

If jobs of all levels of difficulty are to be compensated the same, what then counts as a job? Would I be able to get paid for sitting around thinking?

It also sounds like you're basically proposing we give people free money. That could be a fine thing to do, but then why not give it out explicitly, instead of holding wages fixed?

Yes, it matters who does the job. Good teachers have measurably better effects on students than bad ones. Here's one essay with a lot of statistics: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/opinion/kristof-the-value-... . I also remember hearing a few years ago that a good teacher can teach about twice as much in a year as an average teacher, but I'm not sure if that's the same as the 40% number from this article or something else.

The effect is an especially big deal in math, because it is so cumulative. One of the worst things that can happen to a student is to have a bad math experience (whether it's the teacher, the other kids in the class, or whatever) one year, and then have future teachers never go back and cover the same material. That leaves students with permanent gaps in their knowledge, which hurts them later on.

> And my person view is that all jobs should be compensated at the same hourly rate. But is there anything special about teachers?

Some nations tried that idea last century. It lead to war, famine and 100 million deaths. Aiming for utopia is a noble idea, but the results have been horrific thus far.

Off topic: are you, by chance, familiar with Participatory Economics [0]?

Like most utopian economic visions, it’s hard to get there from here, but it seems like it’s well matched to your stated labor market ideals.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics

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