One of the main reasons...

...I didn't go into teaching was money -- plain and simple. Like many young people, I dreamed of getting rich someday. (I still do.) While the public sector offered job security, it was the private sector that held out the possibility -- albeit remote -- of achieving great wealth. After all, when was the last time you heard of a public employee buying a Major League Baseball franchise? So thirty years ago I entered the Business World and am now working on my second million. (I gave up on the first.)

Ba-dum!

But while I was toiling away all those years, one thing I heard over and over (and over) again was how underpaid teachers were. And how, if our society really valued education, we'd pay these people more like their counterparts in the private sector. Makes sense; but money is always hard to find in a budget. So rather than pay teachers higher salaries, many districts tried to sweeten the pot by providing more benefits and better pensions. Again, makes sense: If you can't pay public employees competitively and if you effectively prohibit them from ever accumulating wealth, you'll have to compensate them in other ways in order to attract (and keep) talented people.

But now that the economy is in a recession, municipalities are trying to change the rules of the game. In a front page article in the Times today, "Angry Demonstrations in Wisconsin as Cuts Loom":

[Republican Governor Scott Walker] wants to require public workers to pay more for their health insurance and pensions, effectively cutting the take-home pay of many by around 7 percent.

He also wants to weaken most public-sector unions by sharply curtailing their collective bargaining rights, limiting talks to the subject of basic wages. (My emphasis and the subject of another post.)

Mr. Walker said he had no other options, since he is facing a deficit of $137 million in the current state budget and the prospect of a $3.6 billion hole in the coming two-year budget.

“For us, it’s simple,” said Mr. Walker, whose family home was surrounded by angry workers this week, prompting the police to close the street. “We’re broke.”

And it is simple; Wisconsin, like many states, is broke. So I sympathize with the governor. But then I read further:

Kim Hoffman, a middle school music teacher, said she and her husband, also a teacher, would lose $1,200 a month under the plan — too deep a cut to manage.

“I love teaching, but I’d have to start looking for another job, period,” she said.

And I know what you're thinking: Good luck, Ms. Hoffman; there just aren't that many jobs right now in the private sector. And you're right; times are tough.

Mr. Walker would require state employees to contribute 5.8 percent of their pay to their pensions, where most now pay far less, and require state employees to pay at least 12.6 percent of health care premiums (most pay about 6 percent now). The average salary for a Wisconsin state worker is $48,348, according to a recent report by the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

It's important to remember that that $48,348 is the average salary; it includes everyone from the guy who picks up trash at the state parks to the governor himself. So while $48,000 looks like a lot of money when you're out of work, it's not so attractive when you're making $60,000 or so in the private sector in good times (with the possibility of much, much more).

So I guess my question is, do we value teaching, or don't we? Which is it? Because if we do, and we can't pay teachers competitively or even provide them security when times are tough, then how exactly are we going to attract good people? And if we decide that we can't attract good people, then we should just stop whining about the state of American education, admit that we consider it all glorified day-care anyway, and be done with it.

Either Americans want the government to provide services that the private sector can't, or they don't. (And I suspect that one of the lessons of this "tea party era" is that people do.) And if they do, they'll have to grow up, get realistic and pay for them.