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Comment by taxicab | Hacker News Reader

> Let individuals look at the content and context and decide on their own if it is true

That is literally what they are doing. They are literally linking to context and other articles.

People can make up their own minds about Wayback Machine's content. They added even more information to help make up your mind on content that expresses a contentious opinion. That super helpful since I want to see as many sides as possible! Why would you want to censor that context unless you want to manipulate people into believe blatantly false misinformation?

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Because the “context” is never fairly applied. I want a little bubble that lights up every time a Democrat says we’re cutting school funding and teachers are under paid. It would just be a chart showing that school funding has tripled since I was a kid and showing American teachers are paid higher than the OECD average. This is a bread-and-butter Democrat assertion that’s made literally everywhere, but fact checkers never add that “context.”

I looked up your statistics and the reason there is nobody calling it out is because, first, that's not the claim being made (the argument is that they earn far less than equivalently trained professions which is objectively true no matter how you dice it) and, second, teachers really are paid less on a per hour basis than the OECD average which makes your statistic super misleading. In fact, the gap in lifetime earnings compared with other countries gets even bigger when you account for their lower starting salaries as well as lower total compensation (including benefits). Ironically, this is a great example of the system working and not propagating partisan "alternative facts" like what you want.

It's all projection. You just can't imagine people adding reasonable context to contentious information because you know that if you were in that position that you would abuse it like with your misleading teacher claim. Nobody is out to get you and no you are not a victim of some sort of liberal conspiracy. It won't hurt you if you get an occasional dose of reality injected back into your brain if you decide to browse the Wayback Machine during the next Fox News commercial break.

> (the argument is that they earn far less than equivalently trained professions which is objectively true no matter how you dice it)

I've never seen this argument, and frankly, I don't really understand it -- what are "equivalently trained professions", and why all "equivalently trained professions" should be paid the same?

> and, second, teachers really are paid less on a per hour basis than the OECD average which makes your statistic super misleading.

That's interesting, can you show me some data behind it? I haven't heard this one either.

> I've never seen this argument.

It's incredibly common. Even here on HN. I personally empathize with it because I'm a programmer and I'm quite certain much of the work I do provides less value than a decent teacher would _in the long term_.

Societies benefit from paying teachers more as:

- they deserve more

- higher salaries attract better teachers and actual domain experts who have little economic incentive to teach when they can make more elsewhere.

- a better educated workforce will pay for itself in the long run, although I think FUD over deficit spending isn't necessary here and would be fine if it eventually creates increased output/asset creation.

I am not claiming that these ideas are proven, just that I personally empathize with them. If you or anyone has research to counter or back up these claims that would be very helpful.

> the argument is that they earn far less than equivalently trained professions which is objectively true no matter how you dice it

I am not aware of any other profession where the statistical impact of training is not reliably distinguishable from zero so this is a thin reed to hang any argument on. If we’re going to reward people for the length of time they’ve been in training without regard for the value of their skills or outside demand that seems unjust. If no one wants to pay someone to be a minister or theologian after doing a Master’s in it that’s fine. Equally if someone is dissatisfied with the salary they earn, whether as a teacher, librarian, lawyer or bin man they are free to find other work.

> and, second, teachers really are paid less on a per hour basis than the OECD average which makes your statistic super misleading.

Do you see how this turns into editorial really fast?

The WaPo and Politifact are particularly trash "fact check" brands. They're pure editorials.

edit: To hopefully ward off reflexive political downvotes: my politics are the opposite of rayiner's, I have the opposite opinion on what teacher pay should be, and certainly would argue about what the historical record shows about it. I wouldn't have my argument pop up in a tooltip when you mouse over rayiner's comment, and I certainly wouldn't call it a "fact check."

For the record, I agree with the general point of your comment - my concern is primarily that calling things "trash" tends to degrade the quality of discussion.

I only say it because I mean it. It's important to distinguish "fact checks" that are bad because the "fact check" label is bad from "fact checks" that are intentionally misleading and usually contain more misinformation than the statements they're purporting to correct.

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