It's widely agreed that teachers in public schools are underpaid. And this is a reasonable view, because the labour market for teachers is an oligopsony -- a market with only a small number of buyers. Markets like that DO underpay their labourers.
Might there be a way to raise public school teachers' pay that is both voluntary and impartial? I think there could be, but I've never seen anyone try the thing that I have in mind.
It would work like this: members of the general public would be invited to subscribe to a Patreon-like contribution system. They could contribute whatever they liked, with the understanding that they'd repeat their contribution every month until they dropped out.
Public school teachers, meanwhile, would be invited to subscribe on the other end -- once they proved that they really were teachers, every month thereafter they'd get one equal share of the proceeds, in the form of cash, to do whatever they wanted with.
The three most interesting things I can say about this system are as follows:
It seems pretty clearly a Pareto improvement over the status quo, above all if the vetting can be done through a network of volunteers or otherwise voluntarily financed.
I fear it may prompt NOT a positive reception, but outrage: I expect to hear in response that -- obviously -- raising taxes is better.
But it's not clear to me why this should be so. Yes, taxes send a social signal of a kind, but doesn't this system do exactly the same, above all if it works really well? Wouldn't there be a dollar value of Patreon-for-all-teachers support at which the preference for taxation disappeared? What if every verified teacher was pulling down $10k a month? $20k? $100k? At what point would we declare that the problem had been solved?
- The system I've described is probably illegal. It looks a lot like a tontine insurance system, and tontines have been illegal for many decades.
I would agree that the labour market for teachers is generally an oligopsony. In some places it may in fact be a monopsony. Either way, wages tend to suffer.
I think we need to consider the consequences of low wages to teachers. One of the consequences will be lower quality teachers as more capable people will choose other higher paid professions. Though some would argue that teaching should be about passion and love of teaching. For some people sure but the money arguments stills holds for many.
Your Patreon-like contribution system is interesting. This definitely gets the market more involved in the pricing of teacher's wages. So this is like a form of crowdfunding. Those that believe in the value of the work teachers do will pay more and those they don't will pay less or not at all. This does not require any taxation which I am certainly against.
I think what you offer has excellent potential. If the right kind of culture can develop to accept this form of funding, it would be great. The biggest concern people seem to have when crowdfunding is discussed is that some people will freeload and never pay for anything. Well, this is the attitude in Australia.
There are some communities that are quite cut-off from the greater society where people are happy to chip in and help out whatever way they can. If something needs doing someone will just volunteer. It's like a big family. These sort of societies would welcome suggestions like yours @honeybee.
I personally wish I was part of a community that would be open to such ideas because I really like it. In fact I would be willing to voluntarily contribute to programs relating to teachers and any other worker group I believed to be underpaid or other initiatives I feel has value but not necessarily the funding available.
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Your presentations are wonderful. I follow you, you work very well, hope that you will always be with us by giving us good, good work.
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