Anyone who works a job that provides a tangible public benefit is expected to take a wage cut relative to the private sector for the privilege.
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2026
177 points (100.0% liked)
Chapotraphouse
14288 readers
793 users here now
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Slop posts go in c/slop. Don't post low-hanging fruit here.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Feels to me like COVID really pulled the mask off, on that idea, and it just...stayed off.
"Essential workers"...who we permanently, societally, treat as disposable.
(I realize I'm muddying the waters with what you said and what I'm saying, my bad. "Essential workers" never really meant teachers on the COVID tip, but the fundamental point of the most actually useful workers in our society being shit on the most is profound, and feels at least somewhat new (new lows we've reached, to be sure) - this place is super fucked)
The fee market has determined that bartenders provide more value to society than teachers. All hail the invisible hand!
If I hand a bartender 5 moneys I get a beer, if I hand a teacher 5 moneys I get like nothing
you might get a discussion about a topic they're interested in and knowledgeable about
They hand those out for free
In fact, you can usually get them at the bar!
hand the teacher a beer and everybody wins
The fee market
I don't know if this was intentional or not, but DON'T YOU DARE CHANGE IT!
I meant it haha. Considered putting emphasis quotes on it.
Makes perfect sense. The market doesn't like having an educated population
That's the point. An educated working class is a dangerous working class. Therefore, underfund everything to do with education and make it as unappealing as possible and make it an unrealistic economic decision for future proles.
Also teachers unions are the largest union
HOLD IT EVERYONE. I got an idea. Children should tip their teachers. Problem solved.
they'll need jobs to earn the tip money
This is a great solution, we should let elementary students work on the weekends, they'd be great at the jobs where you need to fit in tight spaces
The children yearn for the mines (only on weekends though)
Isn't that kinda, sorta how it used to work in some cultures? Teachers were paid in donations by students, or the student's families?
we task these people with raising the next generation and then we treat them like garbage
We also treat the next generation like garbage, so it kinda checks out
When I taught in PRC I was given a free apartment w/ utilities, a food stipend, and a discretionary spending allowance that more than covered all of my other needs
How'd you land in that kind of job?
It was a long time ago not sure how keen they are on taking yanquis these days. But I took mandarin in college and my Chinese teacher made the connection. Center for Teaching and Learning in China. Not sure if it's still around
Not to say school teachers are adequately compensated for their labor, but these two occupations operate on wildly different pay and benefit structures which makes it kind of inaccurate to only compare take home pay.
As a bartender she was probably making $15k a year (or less) in wages and $40k or more in tips. She probably wasn't paying FICA taxes on a portion of those tips which will hurt her retirement, disability, and unemployment benefits. She probably also wasn't paying income taxes on some of those tips which is illegal and carries a huge risk of the IRS fining her. She almost certainly didn't have employer paid health insurance, sick time, retirement benefits, or any other fringe benefits. Her labor hours and working conditions were entirely up to her employer. Her tips were based on customer goodwill and being scheduled to work during busy hours. The restaurant industry is notoriously unsafe, retaliatory, unstable, and offers very little wage growth, especially for women as they age.
A teacher is usually salaried and guaranteed pay. They probably have a union and a CBA with fantastic healthcare and retirement benefits, time off, guaranteed wage increases, and just cause protections. They have access to loan forgiveness. They have limited work obligations for a quarter of the year, on weekends, and public holidays. There is career mobility in education. Even just having a daytime work schedule is a huge benefit if she wants to have a family or even just an evening to herself. Of course teaching comes with its own problems but it's a much steadier career than bartending and higher take home pay is one of the tradeoffs for that security.
They probably have a union and a CBA with fantastic healthcare and retirement benefits,
This varies pretty heavily depending on what state you're in
They have access to loan forgiveness.
Assuming that program, which is notoriously fickle, doesn't end at the whim of the federal government
They have limited work obligations for a quarter of the year, on weekends, and public holidays.
For elementary and middle school this is probably true. If you're teaching high school, you have to spend that time grading or prepping for the next year. There are also extracurricular activities, so during the school year you can easily run 60+ hour workweeks with effectively no downtime.
If you're teaching high school, you have to spend that time grading or prepping for the next year
It only takes a few years to set up a generalized "course" if you're allowed to choose what grades and what educational course you're teaching, i.e 10th grade u.s history or 9th grade world history. Of course the shit you may be contractually required to teach, or materials you're forced to cover may change year by year, or you're forced to adopt some kind of new educational formula or technology by your bosses because of some bullshit or another, etc. You may not have as much time off as younger grades but it's still not a complete shitshow.
if you're allowed to choose what grades and what educational course you're teaching
Big if. My partner teaches - blue state, great union and benefits - and based on her experience you couldn't get me in the classroom if the alternative was a pit of alligators, especially for red state conditions and pay. Admin is either overwhelmed, checked out, or incompetent, the school board continually pats itself on the back for decreasing their schools' resources in the name of nebulous 'savings', her courses change every year, she has to buy books and teaching materials herself. That's not even touching all of the behavioral issues she has to deal with on a daily basis.
Granted, many of her colleagues, who have learned how to skate by doing the bare minimum and dumping a lot of work on the remaining teachers who actually care about the quality of instruction would probably say the job is pretty easy.
And that's not dealing with the elephant in the room: you have all the institutional conditions necessary to create a 'standardized' course so you can do less prepping for the next year. But the students' needs are never standardized. It is indeed a myth that teachers have limited obligations during the off seasons - you have administrative duties, meetings, gradings and prep time to do. But teacher's obligations are doubled from expected during on seasons simply because they are expected to implement a standardized course according to public (laws, curriculums and such) and private (whoever owns the school and textbook systems you're meant to apply) requirements, while also personalizing stuff for classes and students that are all massively different from each other. If you teach 60 kids in two different schools, they won't be the same and they won't be the same as the next 60 kids the following year either.
Very true! Her school does mixed classes, so she has to come up with alternative work for the "high cap" kids while simultaneously providing additional attention to the kids that arrive to high school unable to write a full paragraph in a class period. The variability between classes in a given year also seems to be really big.
that sounds like a disservice to literally everyone involved
That could be the tagline for the entire US school system, tbh.
The motivating idea is that giftedness is largely a function of SES and that the high cap kids should still get peer socialization rather than be kept separate, but when class sizes are in the mid 30s and she has to keep answering emails from parents who want to make sure their high cap kids are getting adequate enrichment it ends up being a massive headache.
yeah i was probably fucked up for life because they chose not to skip me a grade when i was 8 or whatever. guess my parents should've let me watch power rangers instead of PBS.
this was also at a time when you didn't get diagnosed with shit if you had good grades.
I'm also skeptical - I think it's post-hoc justification for the reduction in special ed funding, since the cuts hit family services and SpEd first.
this was also at a time when you didn't get diagnosed with shit if you had good grades.
Oh look, it me
Bartending is a pretty hard gig to get tbh
doomed shithole
The drunks that vote against education funding.
Plenty of leftist drunks out there get outta here with that
True, and they probably don’t vote, so I’m still right lol.
Several states have higher minimum wages than that.
33k for a teacher might have been the bottom end of viable in the 2000s but not today.