
Why Childcare Workers Are So Poor, Even Though Childcare Costs So Much - nols
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/childcare-workers-cant-afford-childcare/414496/?single_page=true
======
ef4
There is a basic assumption that people aren't questioning: that older
children are useless in helping teach and supervise younger children.

This flies in the face of historical experience, and it robs everyone involved
of opportunities for learning and growth. It is _nuts_ that we segregate
children by birth year, all the way from preschool until college.

In a mixed-age setting, the older kids can do enough teaching, entertaining,
and watching to significantly amplify a single adult's capabilities. To the
point where much higher kid-to-adult ratios work just fine.

And far from taking something away from older kids by engaging them in this
work, you actually give them valuable learning opportunities. You give them
real responsibility to be proud of, an immediate motivation to master the
things they'll be asked to teach, and a longer-term perspective on their own
growth and life trajectory.

~~~
QSIITurbo
The older are in school learning more challenging things. Most teens would be
unable to take the responsibility, and most are not psychologically mature
enough to meet today's standards. The modern world is more complicated and
education is more advanced than it was, say, 100 years ago.

~~~
adrianN
I would never send my child to a school with such a system. Just look at the
quality you get from asking teenagers (or even college students!) to prepare
presentations. Usually the result is so awful that you can't cover the topic
in the exam and expect anyone to pass. I wouldn't want my child to be taught
via a game of Chinese whispers. There is a reason why teachers have to be well
educated, not only in the field they teach but also in teaching methods.

~~~
1stop
I would say go and have a look at a well run martial arts school. Ever wonder
how a single "master" can teach a class of 30 people at different levels and
ages without it being a complete mess?

~~~
bmelton
I was on the fence for this argument, but your dojo analogy solidifies my
complete agreement. Moreover, parents with lagging children often turn to
tutors, many of whom (last I checked) are just slightly older children --
older enough that they know the material, and young enough that it's still
fresh in their minds, educationally.

Offtopic, I can't help but wonder how much the tutoring reinforces what they
were probably certain to forget anyway. In the same way that blogging about a
subject reinforces your understanding of it (e.g., if you can't explain it,
you don't know it), I suspect that tutoring a younger generation would help
those tutors cement that knowledge more deeply into their minds than just
retaining it long enough to pass whatever tests they're given in the short
term.

At the end of the day though, your dojo analogy is most precise -- senseis
don't just promote every student to assistant instructor. They carefully
curate based on knowledge, discipline and behavior. Having every older child
tutor the younger is probably unnecessary, and would likely lead to chaos, but
if teachers chose only those students capable of helping out the younger
children, even assuming some failure rate in selection, it would probably be a
dramatic improvement over the current situation.

------
meric
Taxes. A person staying home looking after the kids and cleaning after them is
not taxed. If that person goes to work instead and leaves their kids with a
carer, the person has to pay income taxes, the carer will also have to pay
income tax, the business have to pay sales tax, the premise the business is
staying at will also pay tax on the collected rent. As soon as you outsource
caring kids there are 3-4 more sets of taxes to pay. 20% from the person, 20%
from the carer, 10% for the business sales tax and perhaps an additional 5% on
the tax on rent. Every dollar spent on childcare, 50% goes to the government.
The benefit of going to work has to be twice as good as staying home with the
kids, as determined by economics. I haven't even begun to mention the
intrinsic benefits of spending time with your children...

~~~
grecy
You can expand this to everything in your life you could pay for. Gardening,
painting, car maintenance, cooking, cleaning, growing vegetables, hunting,
making clothes, this list goes on.

Anything you can do yourself will save an enormous amount of money because
using money is extremely inefficient.

~~~
randyrand
Lets say child care costs you $12 an hour. That means staying home is 'worth'
$12 an hour to you. In order to make it worth going to work, you need to make
$12/hr + taxes. Otherwise youre actually losing money by going to work.

In other words, our tax system is encouraging people to stay home. Whether or
not we want to do that is up for debate but we can fix this by 1) taxing stay
at home moms for the value they are creating or 2) removing child care service
taxes.

Its a valid argument.

~~~
cperciva
_1) taxing stay at home moms for the value they are creating or 2) removing
child care service taxes._

Or 3) allowing a deduction from income equal to the amount spent on child
care.

This is the option Canada takes, incidentally; the only thing I don't like
about it is that you're not allowed to pay your spouse for child care, and so
stay-at-home fathers end up without any taxable income and thus without any
pension contributions.

~~~
randyrand
How is that different from removing child care service taxes?

The only difference I can see if that you have to wait till tax day to get
your money back.

~~~
cperciva
Different people have different marginal tax rates.

~~~
randyrand
Ah yes. So doing it on tax day actually saves people with higher marginal tax
rates more money than those with lower ones.

Interesting.

------
codeismightier
Is childcare in fact expensive? According to the article it "can top 15
percent of the median income for a married couple". But considering that
taking care of children used to be a full-time job for a housewife, isn't it
actually surprisingly cheap relative to historical standards?

In general, if there isn't increased productivity because of technology, we
shouldn't expect lower costs in terms of labor-hours consumed. See "Baumol's
cost disease"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease))

~~~
Someone
That basically is what the article says. I don't find it surprising at all.

Do the math: if parents want one carer for every N kids, they have to pay
1/N-th of the costs of a carer.

I guess that 10 is a conservative estimate for the value of N, taking into
account holidays, sick days, and the fact that kids will be at the center for
over 8 hours because parents have to do their own workday between dropping off
and picking up their child.

Also, parents do not want to make daycare look industrial, daycare needs a
kitchen, beds so that kids can rest in the afternoon, etc. That means parents
effectively have to pay for about half a second house for their kids, an extra
set of toys, etc. and they want it all from 8AM-6PM, so daycare providers
cannot run shifts to more efficiently use their facility.

Edit: and don't forget income tax. Parents have to pay a daycare worker's
income before tax from from their income after taxes.

For me, that makes it clear that, at current price level, daycare workers
cannot have a middle class income. Also, if they had, lots of people couldn't
afford child care.

And historically, child care wasn't a full time job. Housewifes also prepared
food, cleaned the house, washed clothes, found time to repair clothing, went
shopping, etc. Even with modern appliances, that adds up.

~~~
jacalata
>For me, that makes it clear that, at current price level, daycare workers
cannot have a middle class income. Also, if they had, lots of people couldn't
afford child care.

You're assuming here that the payment all has to come from the parents
disposable income. Other countries (try to) address this with government or
employer subsidies for childcare, eg in Australia
[http://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/services/centrelink...](http://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/services/centrelink/child-
care-rebate)

~~~
e12e
Doesn't most countries finance school for older children partially or entirely
through taxes as well (primary school)?

Obviously, education is seen as a necessity both for (semi)functioning
democracy, but also for any modern society to work. It seems odd that we're
happy to take care of kids for free (or highly subsidized cost) from the age
from 6 to 16 -- but somehow the years 1-6 needs to be paid for by parents? Are
those 4 years really so much more expensive, that it wouldn't make sense to
just roll that all up into one budget?

I actually need to look at the arguments around this in Norway -- free school
from the age of 6 to 18, along with a free college education isn't really an
issue - and full coverage of child care services also have broad agreement --
but somehow simply making said childcare free seems to be much more
contentious. Or perhaps just overlooked.

I suppose one could make up microeconomic arguments along the lines of a solid
education for all benefits all, while allowing _all_ parents those extra 3-4
per child in the job market might not benefit all. Perhaps more interesting is
the general trend that there's _less work_ \-- so having people spend some
time off from work (with eg: pay from the government) might simply be a more
efficient model going forward.

But if we accept that free primary school is a good thing, I don't see how we
can argue that free kinder garden isn't too.

------
akafred
In Norway, there is a max price on child care which makes it affordable and
the best option for most people. The government subsidizes somewhere around
two thirds of the costs. I guess labour costs are 70%+ in most cases. There
are both public and privately run child care centers/kindergardens. The
privately run are subsidized on more or less equal terms as the publicly run,
and the norms for employee density and other minimum quality requirements are
the same. About one third of the employees are pre-school teachers (three
years of higher ed), the rest are either skilled (there is a child worker
professional vocation ed you can take) or unskilled. I don't think there are
many cases where employees can not afford to have their own kids in child
care. In my municipality parents of all children in child care are surveyed
every year and the reports from the survey are public. My guess is that the
whole thing is more or less funded by the increased taxes paid by keeping a
larger part of the population working. (I could also mention that parents
share about a year of paid leave for each birth so most kids are around one
year old when they start in child care.)

~~~
vasilipupkin
makes a lot of sense to subsidize childcare heavily, it's one of the most pro
growth policies one can come up with - let's people actually work and not
worry about what to do with the kids. Norway is oil rich, though, so not clear
how relevant this is for US

~~~
sitkack
In Germany, kindergarden it also free.

~~~
qznc
Depends on the state you are in. Education in Germany is federal business.

------
streptomycin
Would have been more interesting if they just broke down the expenses of a
childcare center, like that one described in the article with 19 kids and 3
teachers making $9/hr that the owner says is just scraping by.

~~~
rbritton
The article cover only superficially covered this, but the biggest expense is
definitely labor (my great aunt ran a daycare for around 20-25 years). At
least in my area, there is a maximum limit of children per adult at a
childcare facility. This alone places a limit on the maximum revenue per
employee before considering other expenses.

~~~
cheald
One has to keep in mind that the average cost per employee to the employer is
about +40% over the employee's base wage (taxes + benefits, per BLS data).
$9/hour costs the employer about $12.60/hour.

~~~
spronkey
Knowing a few childcare centre owners, they're very profit driven, and they're
generally doing pretty damn well. The staff are paid peanuts, and it shows in
the quality of the care. I don't think I'd ever send my kids to one of their
centres!

------
wolframarnold
Being a parent of a young child myself, I can very much empathize with this
article, and the plight of child care workers. The conclusions are only
logical that this is an area where government support and intervention can
reap vast societal benefits. There is an increasing body of research
indicating that the quality of the care a child receives from birth, as well
as the safety of socio-cultural environment a child is born into (which can be
controlled by high quality child care), are strongly correlated with how
productive a member of society the child grows up to be. Why wouldn't the
government want to maximize that? If we can pay for elder care via social
security, how can we afford not to pay for child care? Some countries are
ahead in this regard.

~~~
wtbob
> The conclusions are only logical that this is an area where government
> support and intervention can reap vast societal benefits.

If it's not an economical proposition, involving the government surely can't
help.

The issue is that folks want a very high caregiver/child ration, for what is
essentially unskilled labour (any non-pathological adolescent or adult can
take care of children acceptably). So the supply of workers (i.e., just about
everyone) vastly outstrips the demand.

Why not just go back to single-earner households and extended families?

~~~
smtddr
_> >any non-pathological adolescent or adult can take care of children
acceptably_

Define "acceptably".

Some babysitters think it's acceptable to just chat on Facebook all day and
plant the child in front of the TV for 10 hours. That's not acceptable to me,
but that's more or less what you get for very cheap labor; just someone to
keep you legally clear from abandoning a minor. Like those super-cheap bare
minimum car insurance that does nothing but keep you legally driving.

Here's the definition of acceptable when it comes to my children: Take kids to
parks and museums. Can avoid using profanity around them. Won't smoke around
them. Won't be speeding down the highway with them. Can be trusted not to fill
my children with junk food. Can truly trust them to actively watch the kids so
they don't do something crazy like sticking a fork into a power outlet or
turning on the gas stove without the flame, thus filling the house with gas.
Right now, the only people my wife & I trust with our kids are their
grandparents... aside from the pre-school teachers.

Finding quality childcare is harder than you think.

------
cheriot
Did you expect the business owner to brag about how much she's banking? Her
customers and employees would love that. Maybe the article is accurate, but I
don't see any attempt to prove it.

Each family spends 10% of income.

Average household income is X.

3 teachers per 19 kids

=

Each teacher generates revenue of 0.63X. Considering each parent is making
0.5X in a two parent household, that's cutting it a bit close.

Edit: I originally commented with an incorrect 6.3X. Fixed. 19 kids * 10% * X
/ 3 teachers = 0.63X

~~~
gluggymug
Not sure how you are doing your maths there. Where does the 10% factor in?

~~~
cheriot
Each kid represents 0.1X of revenue.

------
fiatmoney
Nearly any living human being can do "child care" (if you think about it for a
minute, there is an excellent reason why this should be the case). Half of
them are probably even above average at it.

Thus, high supply and limited demand -> low wages.

~~~
Symmetry
Also many people enjoy spending time around young children.

------
rayiner
Child care is cheap. We pay $1,100 for full time care in Baltimore per month.
That works out to $5/hour. 8 kids per class. That's $40/hour, and pays for two
teachers plus overhead.

~~~
sitkack
Baltimore. That is like saying abandoned buildings are cheap in Detroit.

~~~
sremani
$1100 per month is about normal price in Texas too.

~~~
op00to
I think what the poster is getting at is any place that's not San Francisco or
the Valley is cheap because we're all a bunch of rubes playing in jug bands in
the rest of the country.

~~~
sitkack
1100 isn't even cheap. This guy in Baltimore is a single person and probably
makes at least 2x the medium income for entire family. Cheap for him. The pre-
tax pay for someone making $10/hr is 1600 a month.

------
grecy
As a thought experiment, can anyone think of something that is expensive,
where the direct employees _are_ well paid?

I feel like that no longer happens in the world, with profits being pushed
ever higher.

~~~
randyrand
Are profits actually going up?

Are people becoming greedier?

Why is competition failing?

~~~
spronkey
Yes, yes, wealth distribution.

On the latter, these days it's getting too risky for people who aren't already
wealthy to innovate, and disrupt. Corporations are getting increasingly large,
and the number of viable competitors in some of the more prominent industries
is generally not increasing - because the entry cost is so high.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Lack of competition gives companies more money to throw around, some of which
will make it's way to employees. It's the competitive industries where wages
need to remain low.

Goldman and Google have a 20% profit margin and pay their employees well.
Walmart has about 3% and lots of competition.

~~~
makomk
Less competition also means less competition between employers for employees.
Sure, they have more money and they could give some of it to their employees,
but there's no reason to.

Goldman and Google are employing a relatively small number of highly-skilled
people, which means they have to pay them more than Wal-mart pays its retail
staff. Their pay is almost exactly what those people would expect to be paid
for the same jobs elsewhere. For example, it turns out that Google pays their
software engineers only slightly more than Wal-mart (really, look it up)
despite demanding higher skill levels from employees.

------
cadecairos
As a father of a one year old, soon to be starting childcare, and husband to a
trained & registered Early Childhood Educator in Ontario, I can relate to a
lot in this article. Care for my daughter nearly approaches my monthly rent,
and more than exceeds the monthly income of a childcare worker in Ontario. It
almost feels like a better plan to have mom not go back to work, but then
she'll fall behind professionally, and the baby will lose our on many social
development opportunities.

------
everyone
Article does not answer the question implied in its title. Where is the money
going?

~~~
fleitz
Labour...

$10 * 40 * 4.3 * 1.10 (taxes, bennies, etc) = $1892 per month.

Rent...

Etc...

Basically no one can accept that children might survive without constant adult
supervision so costs are astronomical.

The cheapest daycare is having 2+ kids and getting a live in care giver that
way rather than pay 2X for daycare you pay 1X and divide it over 2+ kids.

~~~
everyone
Yeah, these seem like the obvious costs + ones you would expect with almost
any business. Based on the title I expected something different or interesting
to be revealed.

------
radicalbyte
Daycare should really receive government subsidy - the extra income tax they
earn can be used to cover the gap.

In The Netherlands we have a 33/33/33 model - parents pay 33% of the costs,
the state pays 33% and the parent's employers pay 33% (which is an extra
charge split over all workers).

In recent years they've tweaked the model: parents with 2 x modal income pay
100% of the costs (and their employers also pay 33%). Only the lowest incomes
hit 33/33/33.

For the 2nd+ children the subsidy is much higher for all income groups.

We send our son to daycare for 2 days a week, costing ~700 EUR/month. My wife
works 36hrs (4x9) and I work 40hrs (4x9,1x4 at home). Grandma/pa do one day
(the other grandparents live in the UK). I really like this mix - he gets
4/days week of parents, 2/days a week playing with other kids and 1 day of
being spoilt by grandparents.

------
netcan
This article is terrible.

For all the numbers and percentages it throws around it just doesn't do the
sums on the basics. From the article's facts:

\- 3 teacher for 19 children - 6.3 children per carer.

\- Cost = 15% of median income

\- lets assume 1.5 children per family.

\- 6.3/1.5 =4.2 child carers per family.

\- 4.2 carers X 15% of median family income = a revenue of 63% of family
income per child care worker.

Assuming overheads, profits, etc., .... you get the point. Child care is
expensive and low paying for similar reasons. It takes a lot of teachers per
student. This isn't a government conspiracy or a corporate one, it's just the
reality of the requirements of caring for children.

~~~
gluggymug
I don't think the article is terrible. If childcare businesses are struggling,
there will be less and less of them. Which is why the article argues for some
form of government intervention.

~~~
netcan
The logical conclusion is, in my opinion, that childcare is inherently costly
because we need a high teacher/child ratio.

I don't really have a problem with intervention, but I'd rather it be in the
form of simple payments to the parents. Otherwise, we are paying Jill to take
care of Jack's kid so Jack can go out and work making spoons. Why shouldn't
Jack look after his own kid and Jill can make the spoons.

~~~
plonh
Because it can be more efficient for each person to consistently perform their
specialist career for two decades

------
smokey_the_bear
Both of my kids go to in home daycares in the neighborhood. The caregivers
take care of 4-6 kids per day, and make 60/day per kid, and they get paid
vacations. Financially, it seems like they make significantly more than they
would teaching in a large center. I like the homey feel of the daycares, that
it's a little cheaper, and walking distance. They also both provide snacks and
lunch, which is nearly impossible to find in a large center.

They have to live in homes that are set up as daycares though, and it's very
hard for them to take a sick day.

------
ausjke
My theory is that due to their young age, two teachers can only manage ~10
kids on average, assuming each one is paying 1000/month on average, that's
10000 per month, after admin/rent/tax/insurance there are not much left to
split between two staffs. Daycares are very local and can not be too large in
size, all in all there is not much economy of scale.

------
analog31
It's not too different than college teaching, and could be a model for the
future of education careers in general.

------
muuh-gnu
> For example, with basic income

Oh a UBI communist again. Sooner or later every problem discussed leads to
someone suggesting the good ole "tax the rich".

> paying people to stay home to care for their kids.

Why should I pay somebody else to stay home with _their_ kids?

What you and other UBIs are suggesting is nothing else than "redistribute
other peoples wealth" communism.

It _only_ works if you take (by force) from one guy and give it to the other
guy. It is not a _solution_ in any form, it is simply mugging.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>Why should I pay somebody else to stay home with _their_ kids? //

A very short and simplistic argument:

Does having rich people benefit all of society? If it doesn't then we should
tax the rich to create more wealth-equality. If having wealth inequality does
benefit society then we - democratic societies - should enable parents to
raise their children to become rich [not necessarily financially but in skills
at least] so that they can benefit the rest of society.

Another very simplistic argument is that we require the younger generations to
work when we get old, children are a necessary part of the continuation of the
state. If the state is valuable, or at least more valuable than other modes of
government that would otherwise take hold or encroach on the population, then
its continued existence should be encouraged. If a state government is
damaging to child rearing then ultimately it will fail as the population of
the state falls below sustainable levels. [Barring models that are selective
from a surrounding population, in which case the state would have to encourage
the surrounding population to generate more population with the
characteristics they select for.]

~~~
muuh-gnu
> Does having rich people benefit all of society?

Who cares?

> If it doesn't then we should tax the rich

So if society is comprised of 10 people, and you devour one of them and
redistribute to the other 9, thats OK simply because the 9 recipients benefit?

> If having wealth inequality does benefit society

Youre constructing your argument from a false premise, that the mob, or
"society" as you call it, has a moral right to do everything it wants as long
as it somehow extracts a benefit from that action.

If you can gang up and rob your own rich, why not arm up and attack a
neighboring country and enslave its population? It would be a benefit for the
stronger society after all. Or why not introduce slavery again? It certainly
would be a benefit for the society of slave owners. Etc. Going by your
"benefit über alles" line of thinking, you can legitimize basically any kind
of atrocity imaginable.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
All those that believe democracy is an overall good supposedly believe in the
benefit of the majority, all those that are socialist believe that benefit to
society is important - those two categories probably account for a majority of
the population of the world.

It is often remarked that capitalism is a beneficial regime because of the
"trickle down effect" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-
down_economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics)).

>So if society is comprised of 10 people, and you devour one of them and
redistribute to the other 9, thats OK simply because the 9 recipients benefit?
//

That doesn't benefit all of society now does it?

>If you can gang up and rob your own rich, why not arm up and attack a
neighboring country and enslave its population? //

Attacking a neighbouring country won't benefit society it will be a
substantial detriment as would enslaving members of society.

The thing about "rob[bing] your own rich" is that the many of the richest
members of our societies [in the UK] are rich because of chance, because of
rent seeking, because despite the world belonging to mankind they by violence
[usually of their ancestors] have acquired a larger share of it's resources.
Why is it unjust to redistribute such wealth?

Let's flip your first question - if society is composed of 10 people and one
of them has enough food to feed 10, should we just let 9 starve so that the 1
can keep "his" portion? Or to look at it a different way: how about we look at
an island that's got resources to feed them all, they each are provided a
random share and one has the most fertile and productive part - they all work
equally hard and he always has excess and grows fat and rich in resources
whilst the others suffer to varying degrees. Why should the benefit born of
random chance overrule our humanity?

"We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class
actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent
results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not
trickle down." (Dabla-Norris et al.,
[http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42986.0](http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42986.0))

[FWIW I don't agree that GDP is the best measure of improvements in society
but it at least appears to indicate the efficiency - within humanitarian
bounds - of a capitalist system. I'd prefer to follow happiness quotients.]

~~~
meric
_The thing about "rob[bing] your own rich" is that the many of the richest
members of our societies [in the UK] are rich because of chance, because of
rent seeking, because despite the world belonging to mankind they by violence
[usually of their ancestors] have acquired a larger share of it's resources.
Why is it unjust to redistribute such wealth?_

Can you categorically say _all_ of the richest in your country are rich
because of chance and rent seeking?

Even if yes, can you categorically say _all_ of the richest in your country
are rich because of their exploitation of British people? Or did some of them
rich because of their ancestors exploitation of India or through the Chinese
opium trade?

I get what you're saying with not letting the 9 people starve, but justifying
it by saying "they deserve their stuff taken because they're exploiting us" is
the emotional logic that led to holocaust, or the cultural revolution, events
where millions are displaced and killed.

Cows & Pigs don't deserve to be murdered for their meat, but we do it, to
live.

You got to do it, not because they deserve it, but because it's what you got
to do. If you are going to do it, own it.

~~~
muuh-gnu
> Cows & Pigs don't deserve to be murdered for their meat, but we do it, to
> live.

We dont _need_ to eat meat. We _want_ to eat meat. We want it so much that
we'll kill them to get it.

But for some psycho-social reason unknown to me, we're not willing to flat out
admit that, and spend aeons constructing convoluted arguments why we are so so
sorry but cant avoid killing them.

> If you are going to do it, own it.

As you can observe, exactly that last bit absolutely doesnt work. For some
reason theyll fight tooth and nail to avoid admitting "I'll kill you now
because you taste soo delicious".

~~~
meric
Inequality in a society leads to instability in that society, and tears it
apart. That's why we tax the rich to give to the poor, to reduce the rate
inequality arises and attempt keep chaos at bay. When a society breaks down,
everyone suffers greatly, but eventually as a new society arise, equality is
reset, and people can improve their livelihood over time again. That's how it
was with the Roman Empire, with each of the successive Chinese dynasties, with
the Islamic Caliphate, and many other empires that have arose and fallen in
the past[1]. So it will be with the 'West' we live in.

[1] The Fate of Empire - Sir John Grubb
[http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2014/092814_files/...](http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2014/092814_files/TheFateofEmpiresbySirJohnGlubb.pdf)

------
draw_down
It's weird to even think that because you pay a lot for something, the
employees must be well-off.

~~~
smtddr
It's only weird if the employee isn't directly responsible for creating that
something.

e.g., You can buy a Lambo for nearly one million but the cars salesman who
sold it to you probably isn't rich.

But when you buy a painting for nearly one million, it'd make sense to think
the actual painter is doing pretty well.

A _(good)_ public school teacher in America is woefully underpaid compared to
the service they provide. They should be paid similar to doctors & nurses,
imho.

~~~
mod
My best friend is a public school teacher, and his circle of friends includes
many more.

I can wholeheartedly assure you they are not as deserving as doctors, in large
part because their training is much less rigorous, the job is much less
demanding, requires less skill/ability, and a whole lot of teachers _aren 't_
"good" teachers. Just like any other profession, you have good, bad, and
mostly average. The average teacher does not deserve nearly the same salary as
the average doctor.

~~~
andrewchambers
If there were higher standards required before you can tech then higher pay
would be deserved.

~~~
mod
I can agree with that, if the higher standards produced better teachers and
discouraged the dregs from that career path.

