Are Muh Teachers "Underpaid?"

Teachers in Denver, Colorado have recently taken to the streets of the state Capitol to call for increased pay, i.e., for a greater mulcting of the taxpayer. They are supposedly “underpaid,” and the greedy taxpayers, darnit for wanting to keep more of their own money, need to cough up more dough for the wonderful public good of education. It is said to be of collective benefit, and thus a necessity for everyone to fund it and government to provide it.

Nevermind the bloated bureaucracy that already exists to perpetuate this theft-for-schooling scheme they’ve solidified in American life, with education being as popular and untouchable as talking about defunding the military; the teachers want more money. “Teachers are valuable, kids need to learn, so teachers need more money,” the unquestioned thinking goes.

And they sure do want more money — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars! And it is about getting it at the expense of another’s right to keep their money. As the Denver Post reports of their walkout,

“Lawmakers also will be asked to reduce
or freeze corporate tax breaks of all kinds
until school funding is restored and per-
pupil funding reaches the national average,
according to the CEA.”

The issue here has become entirely politicized, and the government has become nothing more than a means which people use to steal from one another for whatever cause they claim is necessary to use other people’s money to fund.

Are they “underpaid?”

First we might ask, relative to what or whom are they underpaid? The government has the market to look at in other professions, but whatever it pays is still not decided on a voluntary basis. Public schools are funded through taxes, and that money was extracted coercively from the taxpayers, rather than through a market payment on that person’s part. From the start then we would have to question if the person being forced to pay believes they’re “underpaid.”

So who are they to say “schools need more funding?” It’s not their money, for one, but how could they know? How could anyone know better than the parents or those who had their money stolen? It would seem that the teachers are grasping for a vague idea of what it is they should be getting paid. How do they calculate what it should be?

In the market economy, we can only conclude that the just price and wage are the market price and the market wage. This would be the prices and wages determined by voluntary transactions. In other words, teachers would be paid what they’re worth in the market economy. But they probably wouldn't like this, as many things help to prop-up the teacher’s position under the system of government: the teacher’s unions, pensions, the licensure required to get in that keeps others out, etc.

Thus, in a free market, whatever it is teachers are paid, on average or however it would be measured, is the just wage (moral and economic). Wages arise in a bidding process just like all other prices, and they would be bid up to their worth in a free market. If more teachers were needed, wages would rise; if there were too many teachers, wages would fall, and they would seek other lines of work. There’s sort of a contradiction right within the claim that “we need more teachers” and “we’re underpaid.”

It would be as arbitrary as to say “gasoline should sell for no more than $1.00 per gallon” as to say “teachers should be paid $X an hour.” This is why those who advocate for a “minimum wage” law must decide upon some completely arbitrary number, usually one that sounds nice and round: “$15 an hour.”

Consumers might all wish everything sold for the price of “free,” and producers to markup everything 10,000% of their costs, but through the market process we’re able to end with a mutually beneficial and agreeable price. A 10 pound bag of potatoes comes to be $5, or whatever, because that’s what its price is as competitive processes continue to play out in the economy. If it’s true wages are higher elsewhere, then why wouldn’t teachers go accept a job in those fields? Their whole pitch seems to be that (1) teaching is very important; (2) the public doesn’t care and doesn’t fund it enough, but I insist on remaining a teacher; therefore (3) the government has an indispensable role to play in forcing people to pay us more money because we said so. Not very convincing.

If anything, they’re inherently overpaid, because they never had a right to be paid in taxpayer money in the first place, and their wages aren’t determined by markets. If it’s true teachers offer a valuable, indispensable service, and I am not saying that they do not, then surely they would thrive in a market economy, and everyone would continue to pay teachers to educate their children. But the pay issue seems to treat them as if every teacher is the same. Should all teachers, or based around some criteria, be paid $X?

In short, it’s useless to argue statistics or averages or even real numbers at all when it comes to the issue of teacher’s pay. The service of schooling and teaching should be turned over to the market economy to decide. And it is a logical matter, of people being forced to fund schools, which can show that if they valued there money being put into schooling they wouldn’t need to be coerced via taxation. That they are is really proof that they would have valued its use in another way.

When people want to protect (politically fix the pensions and the wages) production stages of the economy (teacher’s producing education), forgetting about the most important consumers (the parents, the children), you know it’s never about the kids and all about them. The kids are another poker chip for padding teacher’s income. Apparently, what it is they’re after is a wage that is higher than what the market wage for teaching might be, as the only way to do this is petition the government for artificially higher wages.

No freedom

Since there is no free-market, there is no way to say what teachers “should be” paid. All we can say is that the market, rather than bureaucrats, should decide. But one might intuitively look at the salaries of some superintendents who have only a few thousand children under them, and see that their quarter-million dollar annual incomes are quite large for such a cozy position.

The point is that one is not free to halt payment to public schools and demonstrate that they indeed don’t value it whatever; and one is not free to reward exceptional teachers and schools with greater pay because they truly value what their children get from it. Whatever their wages are have become a political issue, rather than the result of liberty.

Disconnecting payment from receiving the service makes for an awkward arrangement to say the least. People are most familiar and comfortable with market transactions: you pay for the good, and receive it immediately. Taxing someone and forcibly providing them with schooling removes the parties who matter from the relationship.

How can the government even know where to allocate its stolen money? If teachers are underfunded, then surely the government is overfunding — and wasting money on — something else. But again, this can only be decided in the market. With government, something funded will always come at the expense of something not being funded, because consumers are no longer choosing for themselves. There’s all the reason to call them overpaid, since anything the government funds is of a lesser value than those consumers would have chosen were they free to pay on their own.

Are teachers special?

Education and technological advancement is obviously important for any growing and thriving civilization, but teachers, as a profession, are not anymore important than anyone else, such as the parents, where education really starts. Looking solely at those who teach is in a way to downplay the ability to learn via other means, such as on your own. The call for more pay implies that children are incapable of learning on their own. As if parents cannot teach reading and writing, or that kids aren’t inherently imaginative and adventurous with new ideas.

We might look to other unsung heroes such as plumbers, but unions have helped to overly romanticize these jobs too. Teachers are just another case of over-elevating the importance of a particular job (say, vs. farmers) because humans like to fetishize any good or service once it becomes a “public good” provided by the government. See: police officers, firefighters, etc. While all these things are needed, they aren’t “special.” Not in that they couldn’t be provided by markets, or that they are more needed or more essential than anything else to the point of glorification. The division of labor helps to combine our unique talents and pool them in the market to where all can benefit. However, this is lost on public schoolers who want to make everyone into the same kid.

Defund and privatize

It is true, as I concede, that what the state monopolizes are “essential” goods and services. It’s just that this is the case against it being controlled by the state, and not the case that the people must surrender these goods and services to a monopolist. It is ‘fallacies of government 101’ to think that the state not supplying something via taxation means it won’t be supplied at all. But I guess if you went to government schools you wouldn’t think like this. “Teachers are important” does seem to imply “the state must fund teachers and schools.”

Contrary to their idea of using political pressure to raise their wages, then, the libertarian proposal is the complete opposite: turn schooling over to the market economy and allow the market to determine wages, and for parents, kids, teachers, and all those involved, to voluntarily associate with each other on terms they all find favorable.

A market in education will mean that all sorts of options are available, all tailored to the many different needs of the children. Rather than compulsory attendance, freedom of association can mean that everyone finds what they want. Schools can remove the bullies. The bad kids will be free to leave and not weigh down the good kids who actually desire to learn. Those like me, who it pained to attend school against my will, can go pursue other things they’re more cut out for than the rigors of state-imposed curricula. We’re not all scholars; someone needs to pick up the curbside trash, drive the trucks, etc.

Perhaps more importantly, in this way bad teachers who have nothing to offer will fail as teachers, and good teachers will be rewarded and remain teaching. Parents can place their children in schools that they feel are best suited to their children, and they won’t be forced to put there kid in any school, nor one relating only to their assigned district.

The present system has sapped the freedom and the spirit to learn from the children, who it is alleged are cared about so much by being for the state-provided good. Indeed, the push for public schooling in the United States came about precisely as a means to make them all the same and control their minds. Under private schooling, no longer will there be a one-size-fits-all program of homogenizing the kids, which was always part of the plan, but consistent with the real division of labor in the economy, and with our real, subjective, unique talents and personalities, diversity and choice can finally flourish in schooling.

From coast to coast in the United States, the children are all mostly the same: they mostly all support the government (as desired by the providers of schooling), and there’s little unique about them. To end brain-dead, preppy, depressed pharmaceutical zombies, some who are getting prepped for service in the military, we will need a free-market in education. Those for government school monopolies can never claim to be champions of diversity, as public schooling is precisely to limit choice to a sole provider.

While I tried not to resort to empirical argument in the logical analysis of “teachers are underpaid,” we might simply look and ask what the hell it is we’re even getting from pouring all the money into public schooling, which, for some $10,000 an individual on average, we’re producing children that think folks like Bernie Sanders are going to create the perfect, planned future that we need. Even arguing about pay is to sidetrick the whole ethical issue of forcing children to attend, and doing bad things to their families if they don’t comply. The mantra to “think about the children” remains in full force as an underlying argument for all things statism, from banning guns to coughing up more dough for muh teachers.