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Comment by manuelabeledo | Hacker News Reader

While I think transparency is great and it should be enforced, I also want to note that the goal of the organization behind this article is not transparency, but to sway public opinion against public spending in general.

One article in their website suggests tying education spending to performance, and that teachers in Baltimore are overpaid [1]. Another says that a $100,000 salary is "too high" for Texas public workers [2]. I think my favorite would be this one [3], where they assert that a $150,000 salary in San Francisco is excessive.

These public workers are in charge of essential duties. Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent.

[1] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-baltimore-city-public-sc...

[2] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-texas-is-in-trouble-...

[3] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-...

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> Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent.

Why? It is perfectly fair for a taxpayer to question public spending, including for salaries. It is when we stop questioning, or start making statements that we should not question something, that we end up with a situation that spending go out of whack since there is no oversight. BTW, that is exactly what happens in the case of CEO compensations also.

Secondly, regarding $150K+ salaries for teachers, how do these salaries compare to the salaries of fresh Asst. and Associate Profs at Universities. Many of them are paid lower I believe, for example Assistant Prof. at UC Berkeley seems to make about $100K [0]. So, there needs to be some oversight around teacher salaries also to make sure that the salaries are actually going to well educated competent teachers and not the ones with some random degree from the University of Phoenix or similar. Education and experience in teachers should be rewarded and the salaries should not be flattened.

EDIT: To add, there are student evaluations for Profs at all Universities. Where are the student/parent evaluations of public school teachers? How are they graded? How are they promoted? Assessment results? If so that is not the correct method, since IMHO it depends more on the parents than it does on teachers. I'll hypothesize, put a bad teacher from a crappy school district in a currently great school district and I guarantee the scores will not change much, if at all.

[0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/uc-berkeley-associate-pro...

A professorship is a prestige position that’s subject to extreme competition. Berkeley can get away with paying their faculty barely enough to survive because every newly minted PhD dreams of becoming a professor. The same isn’t true of a grade school teaching job. People aren’t lining up to babysit a bunch of misbehaving kids.

> A professorship is a prestige position … Berkeley can get away with paying their faculty barely enough to survive …

Per that logic FAANGs should be paying the least to their software engineers, since prestige..

Sorry, but while I’ll agree there may be something to it when comparing one university to another, it doesn’t add up when comparing a K-12 school teacher to a PhD faculty.

Moreover that was just an example, other universities’ salaries are similar..

FAANG employment derives its prestige from the compensation.

It’s supply and demand, not prestige. There are few perfessorship positions, and many qualified to do it, so there is great supply. In this case, supply is high even without high pay due to the prestige.

FAANG high salaries are due to the low supply of engineers skilled enough. Otherwise, FAANG would not compete on pay. As high as FAANG pays, supply is still not high enough to lower pay significantly.

OP is arguing that teachers should not be compared to professors because supply may still not be high relative to demand. Additionally, the job is still essential enough to keep demand high despite lack of prestige.

The K-12 job is usually a hell of a lot harder. In most cases you have to have knowledge in more than one subject, and then deal with whatever psychological issues the students present - whether that's starting fights in class or just not wanting to participate.

In a university setting a problematic and disruptive student just gets kicked out. Nowhere near as much drama.

Especially becoming a prof at a top tier school like Berkeley. Part of the compensation is generally thought to be the ability to have that school on your resume. Its like getting a job at FAANG but instead of tech for resume passing in academia

Can we decouple the high-prestige teaching from the low-prestige babysitting? Meaning, restructure in such a way that different people can specialize in each.

Teachers do not make 150k in SF. The pay schedules are public [0].

If you’re comparing entry level professorship at UC Berkeley, then the highest paid position for a first-year teacher with the maximum number of extended education credits (since I assume you need a higher degree for professorship) is 69k.

[0] https://www.sfusd.edu/information-employees/labor-relations/...

If you want your fellow citizens, workers, doctors, etc. to all be morons, then I'd say paying teachers poorly is a good way to go about it.

It's also a good way for a country to fall behind.

Not sure where in my comment I’m advocating for paying teachers poorly.

I’m merely objecting to the fact that the salaries can’t be questioned by tax payers, and am questioning what is the metrics used in their promotion, since I’ve never seen any input ever being solicited from students/parents unlike in universities. I want the same standards employed.

Ideally I want the salaries to be high enough to attract highly qualified people who are subject matter experts and not random barebones online degree holders.

In addition, I’m saying that the university faculty salaries are low. So in fact I’m advocating for those to be higher.

> I think my favorite would be this one [3], where they assert that a $150,000 salary in San Francisco is excessive.

When it's almost 19,000 public employee's being paid over $150,000 in SF, that kind of does sound excessive especially in the context of a budget deficit.

> These public workers are in charge of essential duties. Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent.

It-least in [3] they never use the word Teacher. They do claim the average Firefighter Comp is 191,000 in SF. Maybe it's not 191K but isn't there some number where people in charge essential duties can be "overpaid" ?

> that kind of does sound excessive

I don't know about you, but I'd have to compare it to cost of living references and public employee's per capita to begin to have an understanding. Even if I had that, there are many other factors I'd want to explore: what's the impact of CoL and commuting? What's the impact of employees not living in the jurisdictional area? What are the structural systems which function to determine salaries, both as an interaction with labor markets and those that have been institutionalized? If I was hired as a consultant to make judgements on SF public spending, in short, I'd do my due diligence.

Is it not enough to just say that we should pay people market rates? If the true cost of a firefighter in California is indeed 190k then thats what they should be paid. If its lower then they are overpaid and if its higher than they are underpaid.

This is not to say that firefighters are not essential workers, of course they are. We can make an argument that every firefighter should be paid 500k or 1 million. Heck, they save lives, so why not 10 million?

Ultimately, the vast majority of people not in public sector work doesn't get to make these kinds of arguments, and are simply forced to take market rates.

These markets are monopsonies. The market rate is much lower than the actual value these jobs are worth. Even so, we do not have enough firefighters and teachers. This is a price signal that the current compensation is insufficient.

Not enough firefighters in that there are open positions and no one is interested? Or open positions only for the already trained/experienced?

If it’s the latter then that’s an argument that compensation is too high if anything. It should be rebalanced such that some of it is used for training.

If the former then that’s just alien to me. Here in Australia firefighting is a prestigious job with a lot of competition. People volunteer to do it for free or do it part time while working another primary job, for years, in the hopes of being able to become a full time firey.

In California, people aren't volunteering enough, they have to resort to prisoners. As far as teachers at least, there are open positions, that require training of course, hence the need for a higher salary.

Kind of? Do you think the market for firefighters is a monopsony and if so, how does that shape the firefighter labor market?

Maybe so, but this is always going to be a problem with unionized government work. We can try to approximate a free market by reducing the power of public-sector unions. Ultimately it has to come down to tax payers to hold government accountable. More transparency is a step in that direction.

Is this the bureaucracy defense? I need to be certified, have 30 years experience, and do a 10,000 page analysis before I can have a "legitimate" opinion.

No, but you presented a false dichotomy.

They are saying my process isn't "rigorous" enough and needs to follow their complicated rules and ways of doing things, I don't think calling that bureaucratic is a false dichotomy.

No, they're saying you're making purely gut judgements that are rash.

For any employer, private or public, slashing salaries and benefits is a great way to start trending towards 100% turnover, which is a pretty negative outcome if you want to maintain any semblance of operation.

All I said is that it might be excessive to pay 40% of public employee's individually [1] 40k more a year than the median household income [2] in the area.

Don't equate that with arguing for Austerity.

https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-... [1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocitycalifornia [2]

Are you not arguing that public sector employees in San Francisco should get a pay cut?

Not really, all I did was question the OP scoffing that an 150k salary is not a lot of money. My mother is a public school teacher.

It's not a lot of money in San Francisco, where you're fighting with every tech company employee for housing

Do you have a quantitive way of making the distinction of what "a lot" is? 150k is substantially more than the average SF household, and is about 83 percentile for individuals.

https://dqydj.com/income-by-city/

Average home prices in SF is 1.3M, so a household of two teachers would give them a P/E ratio of 5. The P/E ratio for the average US home is 4.4.

Are teachers overpaid, or are people in SF underpaid relative to the value of a house?

a P/E ratio of 4.4 is nuts. The fact that we normalized that is wild. Same for committing 30% of net income to housing.

That's right. I enjoy phrasing social problems in the language of software engineering so I'll do that here. The structures which enable these salaries are a Chesteron's Fence[1]. Shooting from the hip ignores second-order effects[2] and is a thought terminating rhetorical pattern. It's the equivalent of trying random code to fix a bug without doing root-cause analysis. If I tried to do any of these on a development team I'd expect someone to take me aside and kindly explain the consequences. For some reason (which I'd be happy to understand) all of these valuable mental tools are left on the bench when we move out of development and into other realms. They are powerful techniques to understand systems of all types -- we should aspire to use them whenever we can.

1. https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/

2. https://personalmba.com/second-order-effects/

Agreed that it is important to understand things on a systems level, but at what point are we not talking about Chesterton's Fence but The Divine Right of Kings/Mandate of Heaven.

This feels risky, like a reply to a rhetorical question. For me the difference between the two is the acknowledgement of human authorship. Chesterton's Fence assumes human authorship leaving open the possibility for change, while the The Divine Right of Kings/Mandate of Heaven explicitly buries its authorship in an attempt to crystalize it as immutable. Feel free to disagree, but it feels like we're drifting away from the plot.

My thought is that your claim that setting salaries is a complicated process and we shouldn't rashly come to judgement, while not untrue, is also in effect saying "ours is not to wonder why" and that because high salaries exists therefore they are legitimate a la Divine Right of Kings.

Do you think a firefighter and a teacher should be able to afford a house in the community they work in?

First I think it's important to differentiate afford to live & afford to buy a home are different things.

Afford to live in the community is significantly more important but In general I think it is better if they can do both. However home's are assets & assets can have bubbles. I don't think the public should necessarily be paying wages such that someone can buy a home at any cost.

Are you in support of radically changing laws around home ownership, potentially to the point of abolishing housing as an investment vehicle? Because you need to either support that, or support people making wages enough to own a home even if that home is radically expensive due to other influences. Anything less is Scrooge levels of sociopathy.

I definitely am in favor of changing laws around making it easier to build & develop new-housing.

I can't afford to purchase these radically inflated assets myself... but if you want to call me scrooge because I don't think owning a multi-million dollar house is a fundamental human right, go ahead.

No one’s saying it’s a fundamental human right, just something a teach should be able to do if he/she teaches in an area that exclusively has multi-million dollar homes.

Like I said previously, Teachers salaries in SF aren't even at question in the cited article. A custodian employed by sf makes an average of 92k [1] vs an average teacher in SF makes 75.6k [2].

But I can still simultaneously believe teachers are underpaid and at the same think they aren't entitled to multi-million dollar homes.

[1] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-...

[2] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-scho...

Does the question substantially change if you replace teacher with custodian? Should custodians be able to afford the community they work in?

If you'll pay me 150k to be a custodian again or however much to afford to purchase a million dollar home I'll take it in a heart beat. You probably haven't but I've actually been a custodian, and besides the pay I found it much a more enjoyable experience than working in tech.

honestly yes. Turning housing into a financial vehicle makes it hard for average people to afford. Housing cant simultaneously be affordable perpetually for average citizens and a investment expected to appreciate in value higher than inflation. trying to have our cake and eat it to has broken the housing market and been the root cause of much suffering and the last big economic rescission.

Does that mean teachers need to get paid $1M/yr in Atherton(94027) where the average home value is $7M?

Proportionally speaking that would put teachers in Todd County South Dakota where the median home value in 2020 was $26,900[1] at an annual salary of $3,842.

If the argument is that teacher salaries should be a linear function of average home values and that a $1M/yr salary doesn't make sense and a $3.8k/yr salary doesn't either, I'm not sure where you want to go from there.

1. https://www.credible.com/blog/data-insights/county-in-every-...

No, I think it would be hilarious if a firefighter working in central London could afford a house there.

It’s not necessarily normal to live in a house. It certainly shouldn’t be normal in cities.

Maybe public workers should have access to public housing too?

If public housing is more attractive than private then property price problem solves itself.

I don't think you can make simple rules like this, or expect complex systems like economies to behave according to such simple rules.

What you can know is that in expensive areas, they will need to pay a premium, but does the premium need to be as high to allow teachers to buy houses there instead of commuting in? And if you did pay them that much, many would prefer to keep the money and commute a bit longer because they may not value housing as much as the people living in the community. So people have different values and we should let them make their own trade offs. If a community can't hire enough teachers because cost of living is high, then they will need to raise wages. Once they can hire enough, then let people chose for themselves where they want to work and live.

While I agree with you that the motives of of this organization are suspect, nobody really seems to care about government inefficiency aside from anti-government people. Raising these concerns from the left is frowned upon because it weakens you politically. As a result, I think that the government is falling into a trap where they think that the best way to solve a problem is to throw money at it.

I am left leaning and I want the government to do more with the same amount of funding. Anyone that opposes this belief is perpetuating dysfunctional state of affairs - left, right, libertarian, whatever. It won't be too long I'll lose interest in the party if they don't fix things. I pay a lot of taxes in Alameda county and I am thinking about leaving this place precisely because of how horribly run this local government is.

A common response to your contingency plan is “oh great, another californian is going to come here and vote for politicians who will turn our state into california.”

Which is dumb because Californian problems often stem from our insane direct democracy system which is unique among states

A common response to my contingency plan here is "oh great, another Californian leaving for Fascist trumpers and Qanon loonies" :-)

I am changing. I might be voting for Republican (local) representatives for the very first time if they're not too crazy and have rational mediated approach, or centrist Democrats for that matter. Most Republicans I've talked to including my college friends reject Trumpism, but also reject toxic Berkeley's wokeness. So, I am in the same boat it feels despite of different labels. It was actually eye-opening talking to some old friends with whom I used to disagree in college, but now we're more mature and in our late 30's - and far more rational about things.

I left SF and California years ago and started voting Republican at about the same time. The trigger was me reserving judgment and simply observing how the environment around me changed for the worst, while at the same time having to bring up two young children.

Looking at how things are today, I know I made the right decision.

Why is it badly run, can you find someone who could do it better?

> Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent.

Saying that one should never consider a firefighter or teacher overpayed sets a dangerous precedent. Sure most of them are not, maybe even all of them, but if a situation is found where some _are_ overpayed, then it should not be bad to discuss it.

If two people are making $150000 each, that's a household with $300000 in income. That's not bad for a stable government job.

Also, I don't see why it's unfair to call a teacher or firefighter overpaid. If you work for a private business, nobody else knows or cares about your salary. But when you work for government, every taxpayer has a right to complain. Especially for taxpayers who make less than the government position.

> Also, I don't see why it's unfair to call a teacher or firefighter overpaid.

Education should be extremely well compensated. There's a host of reasons why it's a good idea to pay teachers the way doctors, lawyers and engineers are paid; but it all comes down to wanting the best and brightest working in education, because kids getting a shitty education decreases the country's ability to produce bright people, whereas kids getting a good education increases the country's overall intelligence.

Instead, those people work on ads. Idiocracy thought it'd be the cosmetics industry. Turns out…

You're arguing for higher standards for teachers, which would naturally increase the market rate compensation. I don't think thats whats happening.

We can have a discussion about increasing the minimum training for teachers to be additional years + a PhD. I'm sure this would naturally increase the quality of teaching and also increase the market rate for teachers since there are less people who are qualified.

We can also discuss raising salaries if the school simply cannot find enough teachers.

It doesn't make as much sense to say we should simply increase the pay of teachers if there is a huge backlog of qualified applicants.

I believe SF is having a teacher shortage, so for that reason, it makes sense to increase teacher pay. But I think too often people make moralistic arguments for government pay but free market arguments for everyone else.

Mostly because government pay trails free market rates. So the moralistic arguments come in to play because they're so underpaid.

Someone might also reasonably feel that more money for teachers does not, by itself improve outcomes. It's certainly possible for bad teachers to be paid a lot, which some people might call "being overpaid" even if there exists some other teacher that is making more money and is perhaps underpaid.

Or, someone might reasonably think that teachers play only one part in educational outcomes, and that investing more in teaching quality isn't an efficient use of resources.

Or maybe both those people are wrong. But it's hardly dangerous to entertain the complaints of the people paying the bills.

I will agree with your position the second compensation for teacher is tied to performance. However unions do not want any compensation tied to performance, nor do most people on the "left"

They simply want the high salaries with no responsibly to produce results.

>Especially for taxpayers who make less than the government position.

Why?

Having a "right to complain" doesn't mean that it's accurate, fair, just, or a good idea to complain.

Every dollar paid to the government in taxes is a dollar someone else earned. People are going to complain about that, and it is entirely fair and just to do so. Whether it’s a good idea boils down to where your own politics are, so that’s always going to be subjective.

Implying they could have earned that money without the existence of government. Government is an essential service.

> without the existence of government.

paying less taxes doesn't imply that the gov't ceases to exist. The gov't has no competition, so every entity within the gov't has every incentive to increase their own revenue by maximally expending tax dollars.

It is up to the people paying taxes to reduce it, as a counter-balancing force, and hold the spending efficiency to a good standard.

It’s not implying anything. That is literally how taxes work. See income taxes: A compensatory agreement between employer and employee is I pay you $X for work. The government then levies a percentage of that money for itself. You can see that on your paystub. You’re not paid $X and an amount equal to a percentage of $X is then donated to the government, that percentage comes directly from your compensation.

It’s a revenue stream for governments, sure, but how much revenue a government needs is determined by what policies a government has in place, their obligations to pay employees and officers, and what additional services the government offers. The politics is all around that stuff, but a tax is still a taking of the money that someone else earned to pay for all that, including to pay public employees.

All that legal tender is thanks to the government.

Sure, legal tender demands a government by definition, it’s right there in the word “legal”. Money, or rather currency doesn’t.

That’s also irrelevant because that doesn’t address what a tax is, or how it ended up in a government’s treasury, or why it is there in the first place.

Correct. Government spending (investment) is a loan we repay thru taxes.

So what's the "dangerous precedent" then?

Very well then. I will complain.

These people are underpaid. We have every right to expect the best in these positions, why are we not paying for it?

How does suggesting something set a dangerous precedent? People are allowed to have opinions, even stupid ones.

There is a difference between having an opinion and lobbying.

Why are you making this vague distinction instead of addressing the actual conclusion (on topic)?

> Suggesting [x], is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent.

The root parent shared a values-based opinion with no objective support.

Your parent asked for an explanation of the circular conclusion.

The only thing of substance in the parent was "opinions aren't dangerous".

Since that isn't accurate (lobbying can be dangerous) there wasn't anything substantial to respond to.

- Opinions aren't dangerous

- Lobbying can be dangerous

Those two things are orthogonal. Lobbying is not "an opinion". Lobbying is an attempt to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials. An opinion is just what someone thinks about someone. It is possible to lobby your government official to get them to support your position, but that doesn't make them the same thing.

> "opinions aren't dangerous" [...] Since that isn't accurate [...]

At face value, it really sounds like you're accusing people of thought-crimes for having an opinion (e.g. firefighters are overpaid/underpaid/fairly-paid).

> (lobbying can be dangerous)

And if you think that firefighters are underpaid, then couldn't lobbying (i.e. firefighter unions) possibly produce "good" outcomes? Can someone call that outcome dangerous? This really boils down to you making a value judgment AGAINST lowering firefighter pay. That's what the grandparent comment said and other commenters asked for the reasoning.

An expressed opinion is lobbying.

Read the articles. Specifically, for the Baltimore school system, they compare the average wages of a teacher in the public sector, with the average of a teacher in a catholic school. They try to make the point that $40,000 a year is enough for a teacher in Baltimore.

Now, for a person to have an opinion is fine. But this is a partisan organization, devoted to pushing an agenda and spread it to the public opinion. If they were to succeed, teachers would see their salaries effectively cut.

The biggest sham in public education is this idea of "a teacher's salary" as if an english teacher is equivalent to a math or chemistry teacher. While we can go for hours about the intangible values present in all subjects #allsubjectsmatter, the reality is that someone qualified to be a STEM teacher is accepting a loss in opportunity cost in our current system.

Why would someone with a math background take $40k to teach a bunch of kids math when they can learn a bit of python and make $140k doing data science? Some do, but outside of rare exceptions, you aren't going to get the best talent.

You also end up with teachers who can't be bothered to learn how the subject is used in the real world. I barely put effort into learning matrices or complex numbers in high school.

"You just have to learn it, There aren't any practical uses for it" said my highschool algebra teacher told me when I asked what these are used for.

Not everyone is optimizing for the maximum amount of dollars they can squeeze out of an hour of work. Plenty of people would be happy to make less, e.g. a dual-income couple, someone right out of college who needs resume experience, someone who's semi-retired and likes to work with kids, someone who doesn't exactly need the money but wants the benefits, and so on.

We need good teachers for every subject for every student. That means paying them wages that are competitive with their other options. We are not going to meet national demand by relying on people who are "happy to make less, e.g. a dual-income couple, someone right out of college who needs resume experience, someone who's semi-retired and likes to work with kids, someone who doesn't exactly need the money but wants the benefits,"

If sufficient teachers were willing to do the work for current pay, then we would not be seeing 30 kids in a classroom.

What number of kids per class are the current policies aiming for?

> english teacher is equivalent to a math or chemistry teacher

Do they actually have different qualifications? Each of them has to be trained for a teaching job and, er, remember most of their school program?

In the same vein instructor at the bootcamp is someone who's good at motivational shouting and in all likelihood isn't missing opportunities to serve as a commando.

The fact that they dont is another big problem with public schooling.

The fact that all teachers are trained the same is a big problem. Personally I am fan of not having "trained teachers" for anything beyond grade school

After that we should be using subject matter experts

> After that we should be using subject matter experts

No we should be using teachers, people trained to effectively communicate and teach concepts of a subject.

A subject matter expert can be an expert in a subject but terrible at communicating and teaching that concept. Knowing that concept is not equivalent to effective communication. This is analogous to Great Software engineers becoming mangers with no managing talent whatsoever.

They might succeed, but that is the price of freedom of speech. The good people in society need to work to oppose these organizations, and use the same transparent data to make the opposite case.

I hope even the dumbest 20% of people can understand that $40k per year is not sufficient pay for almost everywhere in the country, much less Baltimore.

But it is possible for firefighters or teachers or anyone to be overpaid. I have even seen it where the firefighters union (and police unions) have captured local government, and captured DB pensions worth millions of dollars where they walk away at age 45 with a $100k+ per year annuity for the rest of their life.

> I hope even the dumbest 20% of people can understand that $40k per year is not sufficient pay for almost everywhere in the country, much less Baltimore.

When I read a comment like this, I'm reminded of how much of a bubble HN is. $40k a year is higher than the median personal income of the US, which is higher than the median personal income of Baltimore.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

https://datacommons.org/place/geoId/2404000?utm_medium=explo...

I know that, and I think it is insufficient pay for a full time career, much less one that requires working far more than 40 hours per week, and take on huge liability working with kids which likely do not have supportive home lives.

Also, a better comparison would be to median income of people of working age working in roles with the work and responsibilities of teachers, or the type of work that our ideal teachers are doing instead of teaching, because the pay is so meager.

I think that's a reasonable view, but what I found more questionable was why you would think that it is so obvious that even the dumbest 20% should share agreement with you.

A cursory knowledge of living expenses?

Rent, auto insurance, food, mobile, retirement savings, clothing, healthcare, taxes, emergency savings. There is no way to fit that all in $40k.

Which I assume must be evident to anyone that has had to pay bills.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks those expenses individually based on what people actually spend for each decile of the population and came to a different conclusion.

Anecdotally, it is eminently possible to live a modest life on $40k. I know several people that do, and would have no trouble doing so myself if I needed to based on my actual expenses. The idea that Americans can't live on $40k is out of touch with reality; in many parts of the US that is considered a pretty good wage.

What kind of life does $40k/yr buy you? Kids? Vacations? Hobbies? Medical, dental, vision insurance? Retirement?

It depends on where you live, but if the household only has a single $40k income they would likely be lower-middle class in most of the country. I know people that are raising kids on that, though I wouldn't recommend it. It would only work in a very high cost-of-living area if you were single, though if you have kids you'll receive significant government subsidies. It will only support a simple and unambitious lifestyle but it won't be terrible by any means.

You'll live in a small house or suitable apartment, you'll cook at home almost all the time using inexpensive ingredients, and you'll take inexpensive vacations. You won't have any fancy stuff, aside from one or two special "nice" things, and the stuff you do have you'll use for as long as it is feasible to do so. The most challenging expense will be transportation, because you'll rely on your car and cars are prone to significant random and variable expenses.

Savings won't be enough to cover retirement but you will have a modest amount, you'll mostly be relying on Social Security. Even poor people often have a very modest amount of savings. I know a single mother who amassed $20k savings on a $30k income just by saving for many years.

The ugly part, and one of the main reasons I would not recommend raising a family this way even though I know how, is the social consequences because it comes with a lot of class signals. People in this class are often treated quite shabbily by people that live in the expensive coastal cities, which will impact your kids.

Thanks for spelling out why I think it should be obvious that $40k is

>insufficient pay for a full time career, much less one that requires working far more than 40 hours per week, and take on huge liability working with kids which likely do not have supportive home lives.

There are plenty of other $40k jobs that let you be a desk jockey and browse HN while you work 4 hours per day.

I've lived on less. It's worse than being rich but not really that hard. Especially so when it comes with excellent benefits.

was that after 2000 with student loans? My first few jobs after college where under $40, I think my first year in software I made 42K USD but my rent was $300 and i had no kids. 1996

Is the median wage a living wage?

It's Forbes though. The magazine is designed to cater to those who were born on third base and are convinced they hit a triple to get there.

I went to a private, Catholic high school. The teachers were paid less that public schools because some felt a calling to it, there's more autonomy and less BS than a public school, and parents were more engaged. 1/3 of students weren't Catholic; they were there for the academics.

They didn’t need the money?

Their motives might be suspect, but their goals are admirable. There is no reason every state payment shouldn’t be public.

Pick your allies carefully.

I flirted with a transparency org. Washington Citizens for Open Government.

The libertarian minded (Discovery Institute, Toby Nixon, Paul Guppy, so many others) used these nonpartisan good govt orgs to advocate their religion. It was maddening.

For instance, simultaneously advocating transparency AND privatization, without irony. Corporations are not subject to public records requests. Many an agency outsourced work to keep the activities away from public scrutiny. Anyone with a sincere desire for good govt advocates for less outsourcing, less privatization.

By all means, advocate for better stuff. Just know the opponents of democratic civil society will always highjack, subvert, project, argue in bad faith. The paradox of tolerance, on endless repeat.

I have no ideas how to avoid that trap. A large part of my burn out as an activist.

"Anyone with a sincere desire for good govt advocates for less outsourcing, less privatization."

"Just know the opponents of democratic civil society will always highjack, subvert, project, argue in bad faith."

The only bad faith displayed here is yours.

Sure, but I would be happy to team with people whom I personally disagree with if the end result is more transparency. Transparency feels like one of those necessary things for functioning democracy.

Aside. I think public services, which are not subject to market forces, should be required to be easily auditable. The tradeoff you make for being a government monopoly is that any citizen should have the right to inspect it.

> but to sway public opinion against public spending in general

The motive behind information should be irrelevant in terms of its veracity but your implied premise here is interesting: advocating to reduce public spending is wrong. Obviously no government can support indefinitely high public spending, so at some point there needs to be a reduction of public spending in the public’s favor lest the government institution go bankrupt. In that case advocating for reduced public spending would obviously be right, not wrong, at least by your apparent moral standards.

At what point would you consider it right to reduce public spending? Or rather, what factors would you consider when making a determination as to whether public spending is too high?

> sway public opinion against public spending in general

When public spending inevitably degenerates into nepotism and corruption, that is just cutting the problem at its root. What alternative do you propose?

The worst possible (or close to) solution to keep "anti guvernement spending" activists away is keeping your spending secret.

"CALIFORNIA SPENT $20 MILLION ON PAPERCLIPS LAST YEAR, THAT IS TOO MUCH" > No we did not. "SHOWS US THE BOOKS. HOW MANY PAPERCLIPS DID YOU BUY AND FROM WHOM" > No that is secret. "IT CANT BE YOU ARE REQUIRED TO SHOW US HOW MANY PAPERCLIPS" > Well we can, but it is too much work, so no.

Governments should strive for transparency and be able to admit errors if any are made.

> I also want to note that the goal of the organization behind this article is not transparency, but to sway public opinion against public spending in general.

They might spin their findings into something you dislike, but consider that other journalists and researchers could have access to these records to bring other useful insights to the public. Isn't this the whole point of maintaining a healthy democracy (i.e. the fourth estate)?

Yeah reading the articles you posted it’s clear that any amount of public spending is too much for OpenTheBooks. Especially how they point out how much of the school budgets goes to labor costs (labor costs are the largest cost of nearly every organization and business) and how many employees in Dallas ISD and Houston ISD make >$100,000 a year (DISD employees ~22,000 people and HISD ~30,000. Both serve hundreds of thousands of students. So they are just complaining about big numbers. Also DISD already implements the “performance based” pay they suggest. I despise such a system, but the promise is that “if your one of the best teachers, you can actually make $100,000 a year”).

Edit: Also the Teacher Retirement System is basically a massive investment firm. The more money it makes for the teacher pension, the less the public has to kick in to make up for any pension shortfalls. You would presumably want to hire the best of the best. Now if that actually happens is debatable, but you absolutely would not want to cut those salaries to the bone.

Regardless of their agenda, the data should be public. Once it is public, we can argue about what is needed or too expensive. And the best reasoning should win.

Are farmers not in charge of essential duties? Are people working at electric plant, building houses, plumbing, manufacturing clothing, in charge of essential duties? How should they be paid? There shouldn't be a market price for that?

And who among us are performing non-essential duties? What does "essential duties" even mean? Should all so called essential duties be publicly funded? If so, by who? by the remaining of us who are providing non-essential duties?

> $150,000 salary in San Francisco is excessive

Holy shit. IF its anything like when i lived there 5 years ago, thats JUST enough to not be on the poverty line if you're supporting a family

150K is not anywhere close to the poverty line. In fact median household income in San Francisco is 112K.

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocitycalifornia

Honestly this comes off pretty elitist. "Well, George, if you're not earning 400K then you're dreadfully poor!"

The low-income threshold in sf for a family of four is about $120,000. And $150,000 is not far off from that. And even more important, the extraordinary rents in sf more than outpace the higher incomes:

For example, a fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the San Francisco area is considered to be $3,121 (£2,340) per month - nearly twice the 2008 figure of $1,592 (£1,190). In Cincinnati, Ohio, the figure is $845 (£632). This difference (270%) is much larger than the difference in median family incomes (50%).

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44725026

Median household income is going to consider a lot of single people; the parent post said "supporting a family".

The income thresholds for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development[1] (HUD) seem to be the best location-adjusted standards for poverty (the federal poverty thresholds[2] are the same for all mainland states). HUD's 2021 numbers for households of 3-5 people in San Francisco:

    |                 | 3 PERSON | 4 PERSON | 5 PERSON |
    |-----------------+----------+----------+----------|
    | EXTR LOW INCOME |   49,350 |   54,800 |   59,200 |
    | VERY LOW INCOME |   82,250 |   91,350 |   98,700 |
    | LOW-INCOME      |  131,750 |  146,350 |  158,100 |

So, supporting a spouse and 1 kid in SF, 150k is just 14% above "low income". But just eyeballing the federal poverty thresholds to the HUD numbers for other locations, it looks to me like the "extra low income" number is the one most comparable to the poverty threshold; in that case, you are correct, 150K is not anywhere close to the poverty line.

[1]: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/il/il21/Section8-Inc...

[2]: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-ser...

-- lukeshu (some guy who has never even been to California)

I worked for a company located in SF not long ago, I don’t think most people appreciate just how absurd the cost of living there actually is.

The people I worked with lived in fairly small apartments, shared with up to eight co-tenets. It was all they could reasonably afford, and they were well payed tech employees.

I bought a new house in the Central Valley for the same pay.

I lived in SF also, and know exactly how much it costs to live there. I also know that because the cost of living is high, many people commute into San Francisco to work, living where it's cheaper.

But even in SF, 112K is sufficient for 50% of households, and the median household does not live in a small apartment with eight cotenants. That's also absurd.

Those households moved in prior to prices going crazy, and have arrangements like mortgages, prop 13, and rent control such that they're still paying outdated prices.

These people have home equity and/or legal privileges (prop 13, rent control) that reduce their housing costs by thousands of dollars per month relative to what a new migrant would face. Although their incomes could be modest, their assets are significant.

"median" might not the best measure to use in cases such as this. I'm not from SF, so I won't try to take a side, but I do know that with the wealth gaps in this country, median is highly unlikely to accurately tell the story of employees working in the public sector.

The federal poverty line != living wage in a specific area.

> One article in their website suggests tying education spending to performance

What's wrong with that? That's how markets work, and they work well.

One issue is that schools in disadvantaged areas tend to already have bad performance, and if you tie spending to performance results they will in turn receive even less funds, which will cause them to fall even more behind and then get even worse results, and so on the cycle goes. It’s a negative feedback loop.

I got corrected, I mean educated, on this previously but even though the outcome isn't desired, it's still a positive feedback loop. A negative feedback loop is self correcting in a sine-wave type homeostasis.

You can adjust for historical school performance (even across multiple schools w/ comparable demographics). That still rewards teachers who perform better than average.

Maybe. A good teacher can only do so much without resources.

A good teacher can do a great deal with just a blackboard and chalk.

Most of the classes at Caltech were just that - blackboard and chalk. Often there wasn't even a textbook.

So, one of the world's most prestigious school employs the brightest scholars, with private offices and regular international travel on the employer's dime to attend conferences, and they are essentially paid to spend their waking hours thinking of really difficult problems they'd love to solve.

They're never expected to worry about year-end donation drive to manage the school band's budget, finding out who vandalized all the bathrooms, or how to talk to Sally's parents after she missed school for three days. And they get to teach some of the best, brightest, most motivated students America produces.

Yeah, all they needed was a blackboard and chalk. Who needs more resources?

The point remains. A teacher and a blackboard are all that is really necessary to educate. Building a palace to house the classrooms does not help.

C’mon Walter. You can’t really compare a class at Caltech, of all places, to an inner city classroom.

I don't buy that there's any evidence that a school with "resources" does a better job educating than a motivated teacher with a blackboard.

Heck, hands-down the best calculus lesson I ever had was a one-on-one with a prof and a blackboard.

I suppose it's like running. No technology can make you a better runner than a good coach and a desire to run.

P.S. note that colleges compete on "resources" all the time. But that simply isn't what matters. It's the prof, the blackboard, and the student. Facilities don't matter. Sports programs don't matter. Landscaping doesn't matter. Luxury dorms don't matter.

How many homeless students did you have in your Caltech class? Were they going to bed hungry? Were Caltech professors in danger of being physically attacked? Did they have to buy their own chalk? Did they receive decent compensation for their work?

If you can’t see or understand the incredible amount of _hidden_ infrastructure in place at a place at Caltech so that you could sit down and think about nothing but Calculus with a world class professor then you are extremely privileged.

Are you really arguing that the lower quintile in income in America are all homeless and hungry and attacked?

Secondly, there is a federal school lunch program for all the students that need it. This program is not underfunded, and is not what I am talking about when discussing educational "resources".

> Buy their own chalk.

Oh please.

> incredible amount of _hidden_ infrastructure in place at a place at Caltech

There were many opportunities to join research activities. This was not necessary for the education, though. I didn't partake of that, as research did not interest me.

> so that you could sit down and think about nothing but Calculus

Sorry, but that does not require incredible infrastructure. It just doesn't.

> world class professor

Being a researcher is not the same thing as being an effective teacher, not at all. They weren't hired for their teaching ability. I doubt any had any training whatsoever as teachers.

I'm amazed at the notion that teaching with a blackboard and chalk requires incredible infrastructure.

I forgot to mention - freshman and sophomore Calculus was taught by grad students, not professors. Grad students have no training in teaching, are very poorly paid, and do it only because that's part of the aid package they received.

Freshman physics was taught by Prof Goodstein, who is a world class physicist. I had no personal interaction with him at all. The homework was graded and administered and coached by grad students (in "recitation" sessions). A couple years after I graduated, his lectures were recorded and made available as "The Mechanical Universe" series of videos. Lots of fancy animations and stuff were added, but in my not-so-humble opinion added entertainment but little value.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8_xPU5epJddRABXqJ5h5...

Tying education spending to performance is very difficult because student performance is primarily due to socioeconomic factors, and not the school.

In the worst case, teachers at inner city schools who have the hardest jobs get paid the least since their students do the worst.

That's a good point. So the performance part of their pay can be set to be relative to that of other teachers in the same school.

The idea is great - but the measure implemented to do that will inevitably fall flat and create the wrong incentives.

It will be a system that has to work across the board everywhere and easy to administer. So no looking intelligently at the individual cases, instead there will be some numeric targets - and as usual the "searching under the lantern" a.k.a. streetlight effect appears, meaning the system will measure what can be measured instead of what would be needed (which likely cannot even be measured).

Next, a lot of intelligent and at the beginning motivated people will be measured by an unfeeling bureaucracy against insane targets. The system will also fail to do what it is supposed to do and remove the "bad" teachers. Case in point: Measuring all kinds of "performance" has already been happening in education for a long time. What did it achieve apart from increasing frustration? Are teachers in the US doing "free form", whatever they like, right now? They already follow strict protocol.

The link is kind of random, soooo many articles have been written about this in a lot of countries all facing similar issues, so I don't really think I can find some "definitive" source to link to.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/to-fix-...

> That's how markets work, and they work well.

Uh... I don't really want to go there right now.

> The idea is great - but the measure implemented to do that will inevitably fall flat and create the wrong incentives.

Not if the parents decide how well they're doing. After all, if the parents buy the kid guitar lessons, and the kid fails to learn, are they going to continue paying that teacher? Nope.

Even having the "wrong" incentives is likely better than having none at all. It doesn't take much alignment if your goal is simply addressing the most dysfunctional cases and leaving the rest of the system broadly unaffected.

> I don't really want to go there right now.

Markets fail when they are government by bureaucratic rules instead of free choice.

I well know that the notion that teachers could be affected by performance based pay is an anathema to the school industry.

But it would be inexpensive to try a simple experiment. Pick a school, any school. Offer teachers a fat bonus for every student they bring up to grade-level reading.

I bet a miracle will be observed.

> That's how markets work, and they work well.

You haven't been paying much attention to markets lately, then.

Also, there are things that shouldn't be treated as a market. Education is one of them, unless the goal is to exacerbate inequality.

The general mediocrity of the public school system suggests otherwise. It exhibits all the classic problems with centralized government control. The current attempt by it to achieve equality by eliminating testing and gifted programs is mind-boggling.

I don't like comments like this. They divert attention from the topic to some underlying motivation (which is suspect). This way, we keep playing tribal politics, instead of being grounded in truth. Textbook whataboutism.

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