Two Jobs and Retire Early? 205
70_hours_week wonders: "A Survey of teachers in a Nevada school district indicate that 40% have a second job. Do you have a second job? Assume you are 30 and since you like to save your money you could semi-retire by age 50. Now, what if you could nearly double your salary working a second job and that meant you could semi-retire at age 40. Would you do it?"
NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not the Whole Story (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:NO! (Score:2)
Wife? hah!
Re:NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
I belive that the starting salar is $24k with a masters. While a significant portion of the summer is vacation (nothing close to all of it), the hours during the year tend to exceed forty per week.
Even five years ago, this was a relatively inexpensive place to live. That is no longer true, with the median house price flirting with $300k. We've gone from well under to well over. Auto insurance is also outrageous, due to the bad drivers from around the country (which is far worse than bad local driving habits, which are at least expected by other drivers).
Utilities are fairly mild in winter (though it's harsh by California standards
These teachers aren't taking second jobs for extra money, but to survive.
Even if it were for extra money, it wouldn't come close to doubling your income. You use up all of your exemptions and deductions on the first job, and pay a higher tax bracket on the second.
hawk
Re:NO! (Score:2)
That is no longer true, with the median house price flirting with $300k.
The boomers are inflating real estate prices by gifting their offspring. This will implode (hopefully slowly, but since when have real estate prices ever degraded gracefully?) as new home buyers will no longer afford to get into the market. Or, wealthy immigrants can continue the insane prices.
Joe and Jane Average, plan on renting for the rest of your lives.
Re:NO! (Score:2)
hawk
Re:NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
You are fucking kidding. Teachers spend a signficant amount of time outside that 8-3.30 working: preparing lessons, marking, running extracurriculars.
8-3.30? Yeah, you go ahead and believe that if it makes you feel better about the fact that these people are slaving away on a subsistence wage for the benefit of your children, but it ain't true.
Maybe you should try asking a teacher what the job's like once in a while, instead of believing everything you're fed by rich talk-show hosts who've never done an honest day's work in their life and who have gotten fat by criticising the people who actually go out there and work to keep our society great.
Two Jobs Can Mean New Tax Burdens (Score:2, Funny)
A Little Detail Called Retirement Savings (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, I'm not impressed by that survey... I'd bet that the vast majority of those jobs are small fast-food-joint type affairs where they spend 10 or 20 hours a week at most, as a way to get some extra spending money. We've got several people who do that where I work. Working two full-time jobs would be ridiculous.
Besides, if anyone actually had two full-time jobs, they wouldn't likely have time to read Slashdot now, would they?
Re:A Little Detail Called Retirement Savings (Score:5, Insightful)
I work forty hours per week. My wife stays home with the kids. My house will be paid off after nine years of mortgage payments. I don't need to keep up with the Jonses. I bought a house that was about one year's gross income (less now)... a fixer upper, but it has also been fun learning to do things. We share a car. Used. Buddy is a mechanic on a car lot... got me a great deal for about half of blue book.
I don't mind working, but don't want to HAVE to work. When I hit fifty, I want to be able to work volunteer, and not have to worry about a paycheck. It means a slightly smaller lifestyle than most of my friends, but frankly when I see a BMW, I am thinking "big money wasted".
Now, would I work eighty hours to make it happen at 40 instead of 50? Nope. Life is too precious, and there is always the law of diminishing returns. I do enjoy my job, but that would cease if it became eighty.
Like anything in life it is about trade offs and moderation.
I don't think that's possible for many. (Score:2)
I don't think you could even buy a house within 50 miles of the Twin Cities for a typical programmer's wage in the area (roughly 60-70k).
It's nice that you were able to do it, though. Cool, actually. Once the housing costs are taken care of, most of the big expenses are gone.
Re:I don't think that's possible for many. (Score:2)
-Nano.
Re:I don't think that's possible for many. (Score:2)
Re:I don't think that's possible for many. (Score:2)
So yeah, I'd say its doable. It just really depends on where you live.
Re:I don't think that's possible for many. (Score:2)
First, 1450 square feet is not a little house. Second, I agree that the real estate market went insane, and that you're not going to find a livable house on one years gross income anymore. There are a few houses for less than $70K in the twin cities area, though they're usually unhabitable. Third, there are over five hundred homes listed on the MLS for less than $150K in the city limits of Minneapolis or St. Paul, right now. None of these houses are huge
Re:A Little Detail Called Retirement Savings (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, though. I admire the way you're living, and your ability to opt out of the overwork-to-overconsume treadmill. Most people end up getting into a house bigger than they can afford, and spend their whole lives busting ass to afford the house, so that they can say their houses are as big as the neighbor's
Re:A Little Detail Called Retirement Savings (Score:2)
No, it probably won't. People are constantly "trading up", and the population is also constantly increasing. Worse, you can't escape by just getting an apartmen
Re:A Little Detail Called Retirement Savings (Score:4, Funny)
Re:A Little Detail Called Retirement Savings (Score:2)
Re:A Little Detail Called Retirement Savings (Score:2)
Relying on social security? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you even consider living off the government to be a form of retirement? That's not returement, that's called welfare. Retirement is when you save enough money to be able to take care of yourself with no intervention from anyone, and it's perfectly reasonable and possible to do so much earlier in life than people traditionally do. I think a lot of people fourty and under have no illusions that we will see a dime from that money pit called Social Security.
Add to that the fact that retirement for a lot of people means "do whatever work I like for as little as I like" and you don't even nessecarily have to save up enough to last forever, just to allow you enough finanacial freedom to do what you love. Of course it's even better if you are saving for more advanced retrirement while you do what you love...
Why have lifeguards either? (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at the history of social security. It wasn't a few more bucks for affluent middle-class retirees, it was keep poor older Americans (the vast majority) from starving to death or freezing to death in the winter. This isn't hyperbole, and a generation earlier the idea that many working people could actually live that long (vs. dying from illness
Re:A Little Detail Called Retirement Savings (Score:2)
A lot of the baby boomers are starting to look at retirement. We have to make the change in retirement age now, before they retire. After they retire, you'll have a working minority paying for the majority of Americans to lounge around, take Viagra, and
Reality check (Score:4, Insightful)
Faulty premise (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Most good jobs require SOME non-standard time. It happens to me about three times a year where I pull an all nighter. I get comped for it, but if I had a second job, I'd be unable to meet the first's requirements.
2) Two jobs paying equivilant will not double your take home income. Taxes go up as you earn more, on federal and state, and often local level.
3) Part of being able to retirn in 20 years depends on the growth of money, and the miracle of compound interest. Two jobs might bring it down 20-40 percent, depending on growth rates, and original time frame, but will NOT cut it in half. Also remember that you will need some kind of medical coverage. Your $ required to retire will actually go up the early you retire.
4) If you work eighty plus hours per week for ten years, you will be losing the prime part of your life. I would not give up a decade of my life, and miss raising my kids for a million a year. Not worth it.
Re:Faulty premise (Score:2)
You mean that progressive taxation is a dis-incentive to work harder? You mean maybe all those fiscal conservatives who call for a flat tax aren't crazy after all?
Re:Faulty premise (Score:2)
Not necessarilly. Only the way it is implemented. My proposal? Well, I think you will agree that there is a certain base amount of money you need just to live. A fixed tax rate based on income earned above this mark. If we agree the base is $20,000 per person and you earn $50,000, you get taxed on $30,000. In that way it is progressive, but each
Re:Faulty premise (Score:2)
Your proposal *is* a conservative viewpoint. It's what Dole and Gingrich wanted. (Real conservatives, not that crap we've got now).
I would alter your proposal to say that the 'base' deductable income should vary based on geography. It's more expensive to live some places than others, and just about everywhere needs to be affordable to some percentage of people in the lowest income ranges.
Re:Faulty premise (Score:2)
In principle, I agree. In reality, this would be a political mine field with more schenanigans being played to tilt the field to the big states.
And yea, I tend to be a fiscal conservative. Why I am embarassed by what we have as president and congress r
Re:Faulty premise (Score:2)
That's why you use the same equation to figure out the magic number for everybody, and you base it off census and commerce data (which, admittedly, is assumed to be accurate). You could still game the numbers, but it would be hard.
Or you let the senate pick the formula and the house gather the stats...
Re:Faulty premise (Score:2)
The people who are crazy(*) are the so-called fiscal conservatives who think that someone's seriously going to turn down a second income (or a better-paying job) because he'll only be able to keep some of the additional money as take-home pay. Have you ever actually heard someone say, "No, boss, I don't want that raise; because even though I'd take home more money, I'd be paying more in taxes." With a properly i
Re:Faulty premise (Score:2)
Nope, but I have heard people say "I'm not going to take that second job/work on the side, because, after taxes, the additional pay isn't worth my time."
and has no discernable effect on "incentive to work harder".
Actually, with a sufficiently sized population, even a small disincentive is easily measureable in the GDP. Just because it has no noticable effec
Re:Faulty premise (Score:3, Insightful)
Retire ? (Score:2)
Work yourself to death so when you are broken down you can enjoy life. Sounds like a plan. You could just try one of those late night infomercials, don't know if it would work better but at least it might be more fun.
Mod Parent Down... oops, it's the post (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Low Salary?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Keep trying to convince people that they should lower their standard of living to conform to your beliefs though. A few stupid souls might buy into your newsletter.
Re:Low Salary?? (Score:2)
Re:Low Salary?? (Score:2)
But I still stand by my point that $44,000 isn't underpaid.
Re:Low Salary?? (Score:2)
I was only wrong because multiple people can make the same amount. You're wrong because, well, I'm not sure, but maybe *you* don't know what the mean is.
Re:Low Salary?? (Score:2)
Re:Low Salary?? (Score:2)
a) Teachers don't do work during the summer?
b) Governments would pay teachers more if we had year-round schools?
Re:Low Salary?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's take a differant county in Nevada then. Washoe County where I happen to live pays its new teachers $29k this year. Our median household income in 2000 was $40k and family income $45k. This has actually gone up quite a bit in the last five years due in part to the housing boom and an increase in companies moving here bringing an influx of high paying white collar jobs. However, the housing boom has also driven the pricing for all types of housing up. While
Re:Low Salary?? (Score:2)
Re:Low Salary?? (Score:2, Insightful)
In most places you don't need your degree to be in education or the field you plan to teach in order to be a teacher. You can get the job without the education, and you don't get rewarded for having it because everybody is paid the same (thanks, teacher's union!), so it's an uneducated position.
Re:Low Salary?? (Score:2)
That's only true if you care. It's hard for people who truly believe in what they do for a living to see that there are people out there that really don't care at all beyond the paycheck, but there are people out there who know they do a crappy job at teaching, and go home and sleep just fine. It gets worse than that too. There are teach
Do you really think... (Score:2)
Re:Do you really think... (Score:2)
I also didn't read the article, which says otherwise.
Re:Mod Parent Down... oops, it's... Wait, no oops. (Score:2)
I find it interesting that people will bemoan the failures of the public educational system to attract good teachers on the one hand and then claim that we pay teachers too much on the other hand. Curse those foul teachers for demanding that they have enough to live off!
Re:Mod Parent Down... oops, it's... Wait, no oops. (Score:2)
(Yes, this is sarcastic for those of you who can't tell)
I stopped when I read this gem (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me get this straight, you drive an expensive gas guzzler then give me some boo-hoo story about how you have to work 2 jobs? Maybe if you would drive something PRACTICAL then you could save money and not have to work another job.....
Living in Germany and Japan opened my eyes, Americans just consume too god damn much. I have become a minimalist and love every minute of it. My only guilty pleasure is travel, but I spend less on travel each year than most people spend on gas for their SUVs.
Hold on a second (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hold on a second (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I stopped when I read this gem (Score:2)
When you do not have money it is damn near impossible to afford a car that does not guzzle gas due to having to buy a used vehicle, and then one that you can afford payments on (or to buy in cash).
Sure, it would make more sense to spend $30k on a hybrid or turbodiesel, but when you make $22k a year... I doubt that her SUV is one she got new.
Re:I stopped when I read this gem (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know what you've been hauling, but I've packed a ton of equipment into "family" sized sedans and had room to spare.
Re:I stopped when I read this gem (Score:3, Insightful)
It's been 50+ years since our governments illegally holed up people and treated them badly enough to make them kill themselves.
Need more facts about her balance sheet. (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, why isn't it possible for her to just work one job with a single child? She makes between $33k and $44k per year from teaching. It may not be a life of luxury, but it should be possible without having to work two jobs.
Ann Marie Perone's SUV ...
Maybe a greater awareness of the amount of resources she is consuming and a reevaluation of what is necessary in her life is required.
Whatever you do, enjoy it. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you work in a job doing what you love, you can mostly forget even thinking about retirement, and leave it as a contingency for when your powers start failing. Granted, one must work in joyless jobs sometimes before getting into a career that matches the promptings of your heart. In that case, work as many jobs as needed to get past that point. Just remember that your goal is not to not have to work, but to reach a plateau where your work suits you.
IMHO life is not about getting to a finish line earliest, but rather about the fruit your presence here produces. It has been noted elsewhere that a tree that produces no fruit is only suitable for the fire.
Re:Whatever you do, enjoy it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Whatever you do, enjoy it. (Score:2)
IMHO life is not about getting to a finish line earliest, but rather about the fruit your presence here produces.
Very well-said, and the subject line is good also.
I did 42 last year, so I now know the secret of the universe.
Not all jobs are equal (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey Mon (Score:3, Funny)
Taxes (Score:3, Insightful)
regulations (Score:2)
Re:regulations (Score:2)
What are those burdens, specifically? Actually paying the headcoun
Re:regulations (Score:2)
And as for "pure profit" - not every company has huge profit margins. If it weren't for profits, those companies and their products wouldn't exist.
Assuming I'm in the US... no way. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want to retire early, get into something that pays really really well. Then hedge your risk by moving a chunk of your wealth out of dollar denominated assets. If you're smart enough to be an engineer (or even an IT generalist) then you're smart enough to be a successful stock broker or banker (think leveraged buy outs).
My point is that the risks we all face are great enough that I wouldn't be willing to sell the prime of my life to a second employer unless I was damn sure that my retirement was going to be comfortable and satisfying (Viagra gets expensive over 20-30 years, yo).
Re:Assuming I'm in the US... no way. (Score:2)
1. People died around retirement age anyway, so it didn't cost that much.
2. They worked physically demanding jobs that couldn't be done effectively by somebody old.
3. While they were in the prime of their life, they busted themselves raising large family.
1 & 3 certainly no longer hold. If generation n+1 has twice as many people as generation n, then generation n+1 will be able to take care of generation n for five years on the average. If generation n+1 is smaller than gener
Yeah, no... (Score:3, Insightful)
You make it sound hard (Score:3, Interesting)
I eat in (good) restaurants twice a week, and holiday overseas for a month every two years.
I don't intend on retiring since I enjoy my job, but I could retire tomorrow just on the income from my shares. It took 10 years to do this, once I decided on a financial plan, and that decade includes losing a lot of money in the tech-wreck.
Re:You make it sound hard (Score:2)
Re:You make it sound hard (Score:2)
Not quite, but consider this (Score:4, Interesting)
No thanks. (Score:2)
I'd be essentially passing up my young excellent sex
Only if I didn't love anyone. (Score:2)
Right now I'm only at University, and as a result have a reasonably flexible schedule, but I still have a very difficult time balancing my time between my partner, a part-time job, my desire to learn on my own, my need for quiet time and studies. I don't see my partn
Mod Parent Insightful (Score:2)
On the topic of the post rather than the article, (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that for a well educated, technically skilled, first world people, there are basically three optimal strategies one can choose in finding work:
1 - Find a job that you love, so that working itself makes you happy, where happiness may include the feeling that you've accomplished something worthwhile, even if the day to day work isn't pleasant. (eg. the physicist or aid worker options)
2 - Find a job that requires minimum effort and time and allows you to spend most of your time doing things that make you happy. (the writer who's also a security guard option)
3 - Find a job that sucks but allows you to make a lot of money, then retire early and spend the rest of your life doing things that make you happy. (the investment banker turned surfer option.)
I'd argue that one is best served by pursuing any of these three strategies with intensity. Compromises are sure to sink you: taking a job that you only mostly hate in order to make enough money to retire a few years earlier buys you nothing; finding a job that requires just enough effort to leave you feeling tired at the end of the day but doesn't either give you enough money to retire early or a feeling of satisfaction puts you in the same miserable boat as most other American white collar workers.
To that end, if you choose to run with option #3, you're better off stacking on as many jobs as you can handle without physical breakdown. The off hours you sacrifice will be low quality anyway.
The downside, of course, is that option #3 involves banking your healthiest, most active years on the promise of free time in the future. If your idea of a good time involves seeing a lot of theater and learning how to paint, and if you aren't obviously a candidate for early health problems, and if you believe the economy will continue to value the medium in which you've banked your savings, then it may well be a safe bet. On the other hand, if your idea of a good time involved climbing mountains, going to protests, and fucking, you might be better off choosing an alternative strategy.
My own policy has been to go after #1. So far, I've no complaints. But, it sure helps that what I happen to enjoy also pays enough to live on.
Re:On the topic of the post rather than the articl (Score:2)
3 - Find a job that sucks but allows you to make a lot of money, then retire early and spend the rest of your life doing things that make you happy. (the investment banker turned surfer option.)
Or, do both and get your real estate license. Words you will never hear together are "real estate agent" and "busting your ass for a paycheck.
Re:On the topic of the post rather than the articl (Score:2)
A massive eugenics program. Once we're rid of all the unhappy, the world will be a wonderful place, and we can all work shitty jobs without having to worry about it.
I'm kidding, of course.
Surely even if there is a genetic component to how happy we are, our daily activities must be important. I'd be amazed if it were shown that the knowledge that one is actively pursuing the career and lifestyle of their own choosing has l
Why not.... (Score:2)
Re:Why not.... (Score:2)
Now go with the "two job" plan. You've doubled your income to $58,000. While this means you're now paying $10,500 in taxes, look at what happens to your marginal savings rate. Assuming your expenses haven't gone up, you can take every cent of the after-tax money and put it into savings
Change your class instead (Score:4, Insightful)
Attempting to survive on those miserable salaries leads to a miserable educational experience for the students. That's why we wind up with energetic young teachers become disillusioned and on the picket lines in a fairly short order. The best teachers whom I had the pleasure to learn from could afford to teach for free. Poor teachers really made my time in school miserable. The correlation was simply too direct not to notice it.
Make your money in a successful career, then become a teacher. That will allow you to inspire students to break free of the boundaries of paycheck to paycheck lifestyle. Your job is to teach them to be successful. That does not mean preparing them to follow corporate orders.
Instead of that second job, figure out how to set aside 10-20K by living very frugally initially and start investing in things that generate real returns, such as REITs for example. Let your friends laugh at you that you have an older car (and no payments) and a tiny apartment for a couple of years. Once you have 10-20K, you can start to make real money by increasing your wealth through investments. Yes this approach does work. It took us a couple of years before we started seeing real returns on that initial sacrifice. And yes it does take a lot of time that is consistent with having a second job.
I love to teach, but I am not yet at the point where I would be comfortable to essentially retire to volunteer as a teacher for a lousy 30K.
Retire to what?? (Score:2)
Hate to rain on someones parade, but that way lies madness.
The questions that need be asked before this are:
What injustice is immediately at hand that I can correct?
Can I remove or reduce those situations in someone else's life too?
Can I spread it around?
Are the real needs of people around us being sacrifised to mere wants?
It Doesn't Work That Way (Score:4, Interesting)
Double your salary? This isn't possible for any sort of professional career that I know of. Most careers that provide any sort of decent income take more than 40 hours a week.
The only "get another job, double your income" kind of positions I can think of would be menial jobs. If you're making $6/hour putting in 20-30 hours/week at Burger King then yeah, I'm sure you could do another 20-30 hours a week at another burger joint. But that's not the kind of money you can retire on. I mean, you can barely live on that.
The teacher in the article isn't retiring early either, by the sound of it. And she's sure not doubling her money. Sounds like she's supplementing her teaching income by working other jobs just to make ends meet and provide for her kid.
Even if this was possible, that's no way to live. Wasting the prime years of your life working sunup to sundown is not a ticket to happiness.
Ask your financial advisor (Score:2, Interesting)
Again, you're better off asking your financial advisor and consulting with you're family than asking the
Like pearls for a baboon (Score:4, Insightful)
If you sacrifice interest in music or learning a new language or falling in love to be able to retire by 50 then you're going to end up with a boring brain that's been neglected for 30 years and has no developed appreciation for the finer things in life. Quite simply, you'll suck. Yeah your money might let you buy bigger toys but you'll always have a quiet nagging knowledge that all all your flashy possessions are really just trinkets.
It's a sweeping generality, but our society is fixated on stop-gap measures that our aimed at making us feel okay with leading unbalanced and/or pointless lives. From prozac to the latest pulp spirituality (The Power of Now, for example) we're constantly seeking to glaze over a problem we refuse to define. It ain't easy being alive but if you blend in as much beauty as you can and indulge yourself in pursuits beyond what makes you some scratch you'll find the ride goes a lot easier.
multiple jobs to make ends meet (Score:2)
I guess is depends on what you mean bby retire. I know lots of people who have to work when they "retire". Wages haven't kept pace with the cost of living for most working people. Many already live paycheck to paycheck. Most will be lucky if they can retire, as in no longer work. You best make certain you really do have enough to live off when you eventually do retire. Retire at 50? As rampant as age discrimination is, you'll be lucky to have a decent job that long.
How to retire early (Score:2)
2. Save enough from those jobs to live off of for the rest of your life. Generally, that means saving most of your net. Meaning you have no life from 20 to 45.
3. Die at 50 because you worked so damn much the last 30 years.
mod up, not down! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Teachers get retirement in 20 years already. (Score:5, Informative)
You poor, sad, horribly-mistaken individual. I sincerely hope you're being sarcastic. I know many, MANY teachers, and not a single one of them does it for the money or because it's an "easy" job. They do it because they love to teach, but they aren't getting rich doing it.
The teacher's day doesn't begin at 8:00am and end at 3:00pm. There are long hours every day of grading in-class assignments, checking homework, and preparing for the next day. Teachers also most certainly do NOT get the summer off. A lot of time is spent during the summer preparing new lesson plans for the comming school-year, and a lot of districts are adopting a "year-round" schedule, which means an even greater percentage of down-time is spent getting things together for the upcoming term. In addition to their own classroom tasks, there are also faculty meetings, PTA meetings, and various conferences with parents that come up.
On top of all of that, you have the students. No classroom anywhere is 100% full of well-behaved, polite children. In any group you work with, you will have the ones who cop an attitude, throw a tantrum, or just flat out refuse to do what they're told. Then you have the ones with actual behavioral or developmental problems that inevitably get put in the class because their parents refuse to send them to a school better suited to their needs. Oh yeah, that's another thing. You may be able to handle the kids, but the REAL headache comes from dealing with the PARENTS. These are the ones who cannot possibly conceive of little Johnny EVERY doing anything wrong, and it must be YOUR fault that he is acting that way. And it just gets worse because schools aren't allowed to use any sort of discipline other than some form of "time-out", be it detention, a trip to the office, or whatever.
It gets even worse at the high school level. I went to a small, private school and even there, we had students who simply refused to put any effort into a given class, and who seemed to have nothing better to do than make everyone else's life as difficult as possible. The problem students get worse as they get older, because they lose their fear of authority. A student who is physically bigger and/or stronger than the teacher has no incentive to follow instruction if they don't want to. Even if they aren't there is no way to FORCE a student to do their work without getting the afformentioned parents threatening to sue your underpaid ass. And chances are, if they don't want to work, the threat of failing will mean precisely nothing to them.
That's not to say that ALL students are bad. The majority are easy enough to handle, but it's always the problem ones that give you the most grief at any grade level. And then there are also students who try hard enough, but always need a little bit of extra assistance in order to keep them from falling behind. Dealing with students who fall outside of the "norm" is very taxing for a teacher. The bottom line is teaching is NOT an easy profession, and even the most well meaning class will eat you alive if you don't know how to handle them.
Re:Teachers get retirement in 20 years already. (Score:2)
Teaching is not considered difficult by a lot of people (I'm not saying it's not hard, I'm
Re:Teachers get retirement in 20 years already. (Score:2)
You are under some sort of delusion about what "the market" is if you think that government paid jobs whose raises are up the whim of the state legislature or governor are subject to the whims of "the market." You must have some very strange definition of "market" that includes politics as a deciding factor. Unlike a normal free-market
Some perfect points (Score:2)
Among other somewhat snide remarks, this point probably has more underlying truth than you could possibly imagine.
I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the line society (especially in the US, but elsewhere as well) turned its collective back on teaching as a great and noble profession, and relegated it to an abysmal status. Society itself cannot continue to thrive or grow without an efficient and effective means to educate each g
Re:Some perfect points (Score:2)
Here's real irony for you: we'll know that American society once again values education and students when we fire every teacher in America.
That's telling it like it is. (Score:2)
Re:Teachers get retirement in 20 years already. (Score:2)
Re:Teachers get retirement in 20 years already. (Score:2)
For one thing, pay rate varies. In my county, it's very good, median is significantly higher than average, and starting salaries are adequate. Of course, the teacher's union lied for years that "they couldn't earn a living teaching" - until the local paper ran an expose on what the salary ranges actually were. That article should have won the Pulitzer.
The flip side of that is that it is much harder to get a job in districts with good pay. I know several great people who just
Re:Teachers get retirement in 20 years already. (Score:2)
Re:A 2nd Job is Easy! (Score:2)
Re:No way... (Score:2)
I guess that leads to a potential "Ask Slashdot." What would you do if you didn't have to work? Do most people really have so many hobbies and interests tha