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Comment by linkmotif | Hacker News Reader

Teaching is a straw man. Teachers get paid poorly because (1) Americans don’t actually care about education, as evidenced by the amount teachers make, and (2) it’s a government-based monopoly that prioritizes “benefits” and graft (tenure, etc) over salary

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> (1) Americans don’t actually care about education, as evidenced by the amount teachers make

Americans care very much about education but the system we're in doesn't. Kids have no value in a market economy until they have purchase power (or influence on purchase power). In a highly inequal society that means very fancy private schools, for those who can pay. And neglected public schools for the rest. The outlook of a market economy is not 18 years, it's 1 year (and often quarter-to-quarter).

Kids have massive purchasing power, a fact which was discovered by marketers in the 50s and cultivated extensively since then. Marketers back to then discovered they could actually market directly to kids, which wasn’t a thing before and something people take for granted now. In American households kids drive massive percentages of household spending, not just indirectly but directly as well.

> Kids have no value in a market economy until they have purchase power

Market economies are based entirely on investment. Market economies value investment and therefore kids. If people aren’t investing in kids, it’s because of market economy? as a matter of fact Americans invest tons of money in early childhood education and their children at an early age. It’s an American obsession. The problem is that outcomes have little to do with dollars invested. American culture at this point has devolved into pseudo fascist corporation and leisure identity worship, so people don’t even know what education is. Being a “geek” in America now means you watch tv and play video games. Buying your kid a tablet and plopping then down with some STEM edutainment software isn’t education. It’s just unfortunate, miguided ignorance, and we get what we pay for.

>Kids have massive purchasing power, a fact which was discovered by marketers in the 50s and cultivated extensively since then. Marketers back to then discovered they could actually market directly to kids, which wasn’t a thing before and something people take for granted now.

I dunno about "discovered", the 1950s were one of the most radical shifts in American life. Average Children were not running around with "purchasing power" prior to WWII they were working with their parents more than likely in some capacity, the war completely altered the economic landscape of America for a ceiling of better never before seen for the common man since we were the only ones left with infrastructure not bombed to fuck all. My grandparents are poor blacks from the south, that statistically puts them in the demographic set for worst possible outcomes, but they and most of their peers were able to raise large families and buy a house on factory jobs with middle-class wages in the 50s. That kind of wealth distribution opens up a lock of sectors.

>Americans care very much about education but the system we're in doesn't.

This is demonstrably false. If Americans cared about education, they would demand their local governments do a better job of providing it. But they don't. Those governments pay teachers poorly, which doesn't attract quality people to the profession, and the taxpayers just complain about their taxes being too high.

The ones who care about their kids' education enough to pay for it themselves—not just lobby to make others pay for it—and have the resources to do something about it tend to put their kids in private schools. That leaves only those who either lack sufficient resources to pay more or simply don't care.

In any case, we actually spend quite a bit on education, despite arguably worse outcomes than some other countries that spend less. Throwing more money at the problem isn't going to improve anything. The focus needs to be on spending the significant resources already allocated to education more effectively.

The attempts to equalize outcomes regardless of the amount of effort students (and parents) put into their education certainly don't help. Assuming they get their way and everyone is assured of equal pay for equal "effort"—why bother studying if cashiering at a fast-food joint offers about the same quality-of-life as managing a successful company, or performing leading-edge research and development?

Straw men don't exist, my wife does exist.

But you use her in logic based arguments and then appeal to emotion so.... which is it?

Your gripe shouldn’t be with rich people, it should be with Americans en masse, who yelled and screamed all Sunday night in my apartment building about grown men running into each other on TV with such a passion you’d think they were educating their children. And then they’re poor? Boo hoo. Maybe if Americans cared about education, showed passion for it like they do about Football, I would understand. You get paid 3x your wife because Americans care about what you produce, and they don't care about what she produces.

It’s easy to soak the rich but take a look around you, people prioritize everything except the one thing that matters: education.

> But you use her in logic based arguments and then appeal to emotion so.... which is it?

My appeal was to the amount of effort required between jobs.

> And then they’re poor? Boo hoo.

Poor people are allowed to have hobbies and interests just as well as the rich. This sentiment is disgusting and you should be ashamed.

> You get paid 3x your wife because Americans care about what you produce, and they don't care about what she produces.

Trust me, I have worked jobs where I have been paid very, very well where nobody has cared about what I produced except the couple of people who were paying me.

You won’t shame me. You can’t make me feel ashamed of my father, who got my family out of poverty and didn’t even know how to order a beer or a meal at a restaurant until he was 55 because that’s just not how we spent money. Your perspective is rooted in the heights of privilege and entitlement, wherein first world people can live cozy secure lives, entitled to leisure and “hobbies” on the backs of second and third worlders who facelessly supply us cheap goods that our rich should provision for us just because we live in a country that enslaves the world’s poor. That “hobbies” and “leisure” as a human right doesn’t give you pause is disturbing, because if you don’t earn your hobbies and leisure and expect them anyway, you’re a piece of work given what goes on in the world to make our leisure possible. Americans live in a Disney fairyland created by Ronald Reagan and the 1980s. Why should poor people in America be entitled to 50,000 USD when people who work and create the things these poor people say they absolutely need to consume make 5,000 USD. What haught, what arrogance. What willful ignorance. That’s what’s disgusting.

> You can’t make me feel ashamed of my father, who got my family out of poverty and didn’t even know how to order a beer or a meal at a restaurant until he was 55 because that’s just not how we spent money.

I never asked you to feel ashamed for that. I'm asking that you don't require everyone go though the same struggles as revenge.

Get this... I also think the people who are working to create the things that you are talking about should be able to have hobbies. I also think the people making the things that get consumed should be able to make enough to consume them. You are trying to turn my argument in to what you want it to be, not what it clearly is.

You are saying that, because I think people should be able to have better lives, I am saying some people should not have better lives? That doesn't even make sense.

Do better.

No I’m saying that things don’t fall from the sky. People make everything, and basic human dignity and justice demands that no one is just entitled to the fruits of someone else’s labor.

The revenge tack you take is also misguided. This is all about basic human dignity and people feeling like they deserve all this stuff from workers the world over, just because they live in a first world country. Or just because they live period. Being alive doesn’t entitle you to anything, and that’s probably where we disagree, because my guess is you think being alive entitles you to health care, and food and housing. But if that was true, and everyone took that entitlement, then where would all the actual stuff come from? Where? As I said, it’s the height of privilege to act like these things are human rights, because in doing so, you deny the workers who actually produce things common, basic dignity and equality.

I agree with you when it comes to "no one is just entitled to the fruits of someone else's labor". Certainly there is no inherent right to health care, food, housing, or anything else produced and paid for at others' expense. However, you're really confusing the issue by throwing in "on the backs of second and third worlders". It is not their labor which is being taken in order to provide these "entitled" residents of first-world countries their free stuff. They are getting paid for their labor, at rates better than what they could otherwise obtain, and would be strictly worse off if the first-world countries insisted on buying only from those with first-world standards of living. That would eliminate their comparative advantage, and take away what is currently their best option to earn a living and improve their situation. The workers in countries with second- and third-world standards of living are actually the main beneficiaries of this middle-class sense of entitlement; it transfers money from consumers and taxpayers in first-world countries directly into their wallets. If anyone is in a position to complain about having the fruits of their labor stolen away it's the net taxpayers in the first world, the ones actually paying for this "free" food, housing, and health care out of their own earnings.

Basic premise: it is undignified and immoral to buy things from people who labor tremendously and still live at a different standard of living, and to give those things for free to people here, at our standard of living. That just strikes me as incredibly twisted and immoral.

Imagine the look of those people in China who have to work to produce Tracfones, if they saw their Tracfone just given out to someone here for free, who didn't do anything to earn it? Imagine how they would feel? That feeling is not about revenge, it's about you denying them basic dignity. You're saying to him or her: you're a Chinaman, you have to do work, but we just take your work and give it to people for free. They must be better than you! They don't have to do anything because they're American. But you, you're just an inferior person from China so you have to work.

That's a brutal injustice in my opinion.

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