Fair Wages, part II
As I noted in the last post, I think the minimum wage in this country is too low, and should be based on some objective cost-of-living criteria. But I’m actually more concerned about salaries for the really important jobs, like teachers, firemen, police, nurses, and so on. You know, the people who actually allow our society to function. Their jobs are way more important than mine; in a fair world, their salaries should enable them to enjoy a decent standard of living.
My grandmother just celebrated her 90th birthday. In the early 1950’s, my grandfather was a foreman at a repair shop for the Colorado highway department. In other words, he had a respectable lower-middle-class job. They bought a suburban house a few blocks off of Colfax in Aurora. A thousand square feet, three bedrooms, one bathroom, detached garage. It was a great house for them, and they lived there for thirty years, until they got old and the neighborhood fell apart.
Cut to the future. My cousin – my grandmother’s granddaughter – graduated from college recently and is on her second year of teaching in the Denver metro area. I’m too tactful to ask her what her salary is, but according to public data, the average starting salary for a teacher in the metro area is around $32,000 per year. My grandparents’ old house would probably cost around $130,000 today (source: www.zillow.com; not the most reliable data, but that’s probably a reasonable estimate). My cousin cannot afford that house right now on her salary.
Ok; well, she’s young, and my grandfather was around 40 when he bought the house, so it’s not a fair comparison. Average teacher salaries in the metro run in the mid-$40’s. Assuming you can afford a house costing three times your annual salary, an experienced teacher could probably afford that house. However, standards of living have risen, and that house is no longer considered the norm for a lower-middle-class family; especially because of the semi-blighted neighborhood. The going rate for a decent three bedroom, two bath home in the Denver area in a safe neighborhood is something over $180,000, which will always be out of reach for a single teacher’s salary.
Now, times are different, and these days a dual income family is the norm. My cousin is married, also to a teacher, so together, they could buy an average home and meet the standard of living that my grandparents had fifty years ago.
This doesn’t sound like progress to me. On one income, my cousin’s family can’t afford the same standard of living my grandparents had fifty years ago. This sounds unfair since my cousin’s job is arguably more important, and she has much more education than my grandfather did.
I don’t like it. I think that if you are taking on hard jobs, jobs that are essential to society, you should at least have an average standard of living. I’m not sure what to do about it – but I don’t like it.
Sometimes I think about my job and wonder if I’m being paid unfairly (meaning, do I make too much). As a computer programmer, I bring in significantly more than my cousin and her husband combined. Should I really be earning more than a teacher?
On the one hand, if you go by the laws of supply and demand – which is how things are currently playing out – my salary is completely justified. I have a lot of education, experience, and skill, and can command a high price because of that. It would be easier for me to step in and teach school than for most teachers to do my job. Moreover, there are relatively few barriers to entry in the software world. If you want a job with my salary, all you need to do is to outperform me, and you’ll get one soon enough. So I don’t feel too guilty about what I make.
On the other hand, I think that writing enterprise middleware is a lot less important to society than teaching, and my job is probably less demanding than that of most teachers, in terms of hours worked, physical effort, and emotional stress. That part doesn’t seem fair to me.
Questions of fairness aside, I keep wondering what the consequences are of underpaying some of our key citizens. Or conversely, how much better off would we be rewarding the important jobs more, and getting more qualified people to do them? Teachers have always had relatively low salaries, and I guess we’ve made it this far, but is that the best we can do?
My grandmother just celebrated her 90th birthday. In the early 1950’s, my grandfather was a foreman at a repair shop for the Colorado highway department. In other words, he had a respectable lower-middle-class job. They bought a suburban house a few blocks off of Colfax in Aurora. A thousand square feet, three bedrooms, one bathroom, detached garage. It was a great house for them, and they lived there for thirty years, until they got old and the neighborhood fell apart.
Cut to the future. My cousin – my grandmother’s granddaughter – graduated from college recently and is on her second year of teaching in the Denver metro area. I’m too tactful to ask her what her salary is, but according to public data, the average starting salary for a teacher in the metro area is around $32,000 per year. My grandparents’ old house would probably cost around $130,000 today (source: www.zillow.com; not the most reliable data, but that’s probably a reasonable estimate). My cousin cannot afford that house right now on her salary.
Ok; well, she’s young, and my grandfather was around 40 when he bought the house, so it’s not a fair comparison. Average teacher salaries in the metro run in the mid-$40’s. Assuming you can afford a house costing three times your annual salary, an experienced teacher could probably afford that house. However, standards of living have risen, and that house is no longer considered the norm for a lower-middle-class family; especially because of the semi-blighted neighborhood. The going rate for a decent three bedroom, two bath home in the Denver area in a safe neighborhood is something over $180,000, which will always be out of reach for a single teacher’s salary.
Now, times are different, and these days a dual income family is the norm. My cousin is married, also to a teacher, so together, they could buy an average home and meet the standard of living that my grandparents had fifty years ago.
This doesn’t sound like progress to me. On one income, my cousin’s family can’t afford the same standard of living my grandparents had fifty years ago. This sounds unfair since my cousin’s job is arguably more important, and she has much more education than my grandfather did.
I don’t like it. I think that if you are taking on hard jobs, jobs that are essential to society, you should at least have an average standard of living. I’m not sure what to do about it – but I don’t like it.
Sometimes I think about my job and wonder if I’m being paid unfairly (meaning, do I make too much). As a computer programmer, I bring in significantly more than my cousin and her husband combined. Should I really be earning more than a teacher?
On the one hand, if you go by the laws of supply and demand – which is how things are currently playing out – my salary is completely justified. I have a lot of education, experience, and skill, and can command a high price because of that. It would be easier for me to step in and teach school than for most teachers to do my job. Moreover, there are relatively few barriers to entry in the software world. If you want a job with my salary, all you need to do is to outperform me, and you’ll get one soon enough. So I don’t feel too guilty about what I make.
On the other hand, I think that writing enterprise middleware is a lot less important to society than teaching, and my job is probably less demanding than that of most teachers, in terms of hours worked, physical effort, and emotional stress. That part doesn’t seem fair to me.
Questions of fairness aside, I keep wondering what the consequences are of underpaying some of our key citizens. Or conversely, how much better off would we be rewarding the important jobs more, and getting more qualified people to do them? Teachers have always had relatively low salaries, and I guess we’ve made it this far, but is that the best we can do?
posted by Jim at
9:43 PM
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