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Comment by EtienneDeLyon | Hacker News Reader

When you overpay teachers, people who hate teaching, and hate being teachers, will become teachers for the money.

Is a good idea to select the people who hate teaching to become teachers?

Yeah, why would we pay top dollar for top talent and then hold that talent to high standards? That certainly doesn’t work in any other profession.

If you are paying top dollar for top talent, then you are not overpaying anyone.

If you can read, thank a teacher!

When you underpay teachers, people who hate teaching, and hate being teachers, will become teachers because all the people that had better options did something else.

And then you will have people who absolutely love teaching, and are willing to live in poverty to do so, speckled around that cess pool of mediocrity. It reminds me of high school actually.

That means overpayment is wrong and underpayment is wrong.

Teachers should be paid the correct amount, no more and no less.

I love how it took three comments to arrive at a tautology.

When you overpay CEOs, people who hate leading, and hate being CEOs, will become CEOs for the money.

Is a good idea to select the people who hate leading to become CEOs?

Yes

You say that as though it’s an option

CEO is selected by the investors for whoever will side with the investors 100% of the time over every other group including employees

What you suggest would subvert this and so it won’t and can’t happen

This was far more of an option in the 1980s and earlier; a CEO being compensated 20-30x a line employee was pretty standard around then; now it's closer to 250-300x. I think there's more optionality than we may assume, we've just left the structural incentives that drive that difference in place.

We call this new movement “involuntary CEO”. Bob you’re now it.

This is true of every single job.

Teachers are high in big five trait agreeableness which means they typically don't negotiate on their own behalf

Teachers usually outsource negotiations to their unions and therefore largely cannot negotiate on their own behalf, even if they wanted to.

You made an assertion that is based in fantasy, and then asked a question based on this silly assertion. Just wow.

Absolutely dumb take. There are plenty of very bright and talented people that would have made excellent teachers but chose different career paths because - surprise surprise - the pay is better.

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