Public school teachers aren't underpaid

Public school teacher's unions are huge contributors to Democrats. Perhaps that's why the #FakeNews media is always complaining that teachers are underpaid.

In Chicago where few students get a decent education the median salary for public school teachers is $71,017.  Compare that to the median per capita income in Chicago of $27,418 or its median household income--which can include multiple wage earners--of $46,877.  Teachers are living on easy street.

Further teachers only work 9 months a year.

Don't forget to include the fact that it's nearly impossible to fire a teacher no mater how incompetent or unsuccessful they are at their job.  That's a guarantee that the average American would love to have just to ensure that a nasty boss doesn't fire them for no reason.

In Chicago for example 79% of 8th graders aren't proficient in reading. Can you imagine that workers who produced products of which only 21% met the design specifications would have their jobs for long?  If you think they would go talk to all the autoworkers in Detroit who lost their jobs in part because of low quality control; but still far better performance that that of Chicago city teachers.

Part of the problem is that all of the government workers and politicians are paid even more.  For example this plot show the total compensation--wages and benefits--of the average Federal government worker vs time compared to the same figure for the private sector.

Even during the recession government wages increased faster than the wages of the people who pay the taxes that pay for the government.

Leftists will claim that this is an unfair comparison because the educational qualifications of government employees are higher but the question is why is that necessary? Few government jobs, outside of NASA and the Intelligence Community, require people with lots of education.  In the private sector if you get a degree in say gender studies and you can't get an academic job odds are you're going to have to take a low paying job.  But apparently that's not true if you join the government.

In any case if you're a Democrat politician or a Democrat government employee the $71 thousand that a Chicago teacher makes does look low but if you're an average American it looks just about right at best though if a private sector worker did such a bad job they'd be fired while teachers can just keep on collecting their checks.