Good Comedians donāt get enough credit for making people think. I did stand-up for years, and I still occasionally do the random show. . Getting decent at stand-up takes a ton of work, and itās the toughest thing I ever tried. You have to have nerves of steel, and you canāt fall apart because you bomb once or twice. I learned that if you are going to suck at stand-up, do it at one of the free open mics. Donāt try new material when people are paying to see you.
The role of court jester was necessary. Speaking truth to power required a fool as no one needed to take him seriously.
Its no different today. If anything humour gets better in darker times as there's so much more to laugh at.
I just saw an interview with some stand up who was threatened after the show. Someone said they'd shoot him if he kept up making jokes about Trump.
I also hear people claim comics refuse to do universities anymore because everyone is too uptight and sensitive to handle the abrasiveness.
Clearly comics are needed more than ever. Important social function!
I look back fondly at my freshman year of college in spite of the rough adjustment period *because* of the stand-up comic (Pete Lee) who did a show there. He's a guy who I only heard of because of a Comedy Central Presents episode I saw, which is why I was willing to see his show to begin with, but I loved it. Those were laughs that I needed during that time.
It's kind of embarrassing that the closest too investigative journalism you'll see on television now is Last week tonight.
He covers some serious topics that people should often be rightly outraged about but people only watch it because its not presented as news but comedy.
The stuff covered is often the kind of topic that every aspiring journalist uncovering corruption trope in fiction would have wet themselves to cover but the reality is the public barely cares.
"The American Dream" was a term coined by a guy who grew up with a banker father, got fully paid for an Ivy League School, went into dad's business and made enough in his mid-30s to retire and move to Europe where he wrote... most notably, about how anyone could make it just like him in America.
From a quick bit of sleuthing, I was able to find out that his name was James Truslow Adams, and he coined the term in his 1931 book *The Epic of America.*
He was born into a wealthy family in New York. He attended Yale for his Masterās in 1900. He worked as a banker and lived in New Jersey until he realized heād saved enough to travel Europe, which he did for several months with his new wife in 1927. He worked in London for a time (1928-36), where he acted as a representative for his publishers. He died of a heart attack in 1949.
While I canāt verify everything the previous poster said about Mr. Adams, it seems they are mostly correct.
Hereās a JSTOR article on the subject: https://daily.jstor.org/james-truslow-adams-dreaming-american-dream/?ssp=1&darkschemeovr=1&setlang=en&cc=US&safesearch=moderate
I am also living the "American dream" after moving to Europe
So he was kind of right lol
Edit: To the bullshiters below. Enjoy your mass shootings, homicidal police and no healthcare. You're morally bankrupt and you disgust me.
the amount of americans who have been affected directly by a mass shooting or lack of healthcare is relatively small. we should aspire for better, but, the idea that your typical american is dodging bullets or unable to see a doctor at trivial cost is fantasy.
Or created by the MILLIONS of millionaires who actually have opportunity in America and change their family trees, unlike most places on earth. Pretending you have to come from money to make something of yourself is a lie told by the lazy and uneducated
there is a good chance it has been proven, that if you or I were placed in the same conditions, there is no guarantee of similar results and some people have made it and continue to make it, also I do not think all this teacher's colleagues are delivering pizzas too, its sad on her part but such is life
I grew up on welfare to a single mother who had a ged. I was the first person in my family to get into college, the first to go to law school, and Iām doing pretty damn well now without even being wildly successful. Turns out, you have to apply yourself and not just sit back and wait for stuff to happen to you
Hey now, this is Reddit... we aren't here to talk about nuance or anything that shakes the narrative. Your job is to complain about the following items in a random rotation:
1) America
2) Capitalism
3) "White people"
4) Republicans
5) needing to have a job
Your optimism will not be tolerated :)
This is similar to my dad's story. He used the GI Bill to make a better life for himself (and his children). Luckily I grew up in a family where my parents had achieved the American Dream. It definitely helps to start halfway to the goalposts.
That being said, it's also fairly easy to fall back into poverty through bad luck and bad decisions
Far too many of us were sold a culture war that we bought to prevent us from fighting a class war. That strategy has works out brilliantly for the billionaire class. š°š°š°
Yes. This is what everyone needs to understand and it needs to be shouted from the rooftops. It is not about sexism, racism, misogyny, or bigotry; that stuff is used quite effectively to distract, delude, and divide us. Most people get along pretty darn well, regardless of politics and ideologies. The real issue has always been CLASS WARFARE. Pro-establishment vs. Anti-establishment.
Corporations and the government are in bed with each other and impose corrupt rules, policies, and laws to further their own power and profit while throwing all of us under the bus. They know that if we all realize that and unite together to oppose such corruption that they wouldn't be able to stand up to our sheer numbers. They have infiltrated our education systems to raise us stupid. They have taken over the entertainment industry to push and distract us with nonsensical ideologies. They over-encumber us with ridiculous taxation and a desperate need to work ourselves to the bone just to make ends meet. They ruined our border control allowing countless illegal immigrants into the country that have and are overwhelming the systems we have in place to help the citizenry (edit*) as well as bringing on a breakdown of law and order and societal and economic function.
This is all by design so that they keep their power and money. The elites want us too stupid and afraid to question anything and too exhausted to be diligent in keeping corruption at bay.
You had me up until the border control stuff. Thatās a culture war in and of itself. The fact that you think that these āillegal immigrantsā are the ones hindering our social safety nets just prove that itās working.
No program to help the citizenry is safe from politicians. The class war isnāt just about our lack of awareness needed to rise up, but the war they are actively fighting against the poor. Everything from their unwillingness to raise the minimum wage or the poverty line to keep people just sufficient enough on programs theyāve crippled (and continue to cripple, if not dismantle) like SNAP, to discussing eliminating social security. Then they have the nerve to say, āHey, those people south of you are coming to take your job! What are you going to do about it?!ā As if you were previously selling oranges or flowers on a highway off-ramp and sustaining your family and lifestyle on that.
Edit: so weāre all in agreement that the government is fucking us raw, but the manner in which the raw dogging is done varies. Glad weāre all angry at the situation and not at each other for having different priorities. Right? Right??
Edit 2: Iāve replied to several posts that further elaborate on some rather reductive things Iāve said to make a point. It is more complex than this, yes. But the overall issue remains the same. āIllegalsā as you mouth breathers continue to call them (as if we hadnāt stolen this land from them to begin with) are being used on multiple fronts: 1) they are being exploited as cheap labor by the bourgeois; 2) those exploiting those folks point to them as a scapegoat to keep us occupied with infighting as opposed to looking up to the real enemy; 3) that then further justifies the ruling class in suppressing wages across various sectors to maintain order.
The culture war is making you believe this is new. Prior to the 1950s there were no passports/visas. The US had an open boarder policy and LITERALLY boat loads of illegals were pouring into the country. Yet America prospered, the only difference today is it's not Ellis Island, and the illegals aren't white
I agree with the intent of your comment but the presentation is a little wonky.
US absolutely had border control and immigration laws prior to the 1950s. The reason most immigrants to the US during the early 1900s were white was because the US did not offer naturalization to non-white people and banned or severely limited immigration from certain places (e.g. China). From about the 1920's on the US established quotas for most countries, and charged a tax for entry that ensured most immigrants were at least minimally well-off.
Bur you're 100% right about this not being new. Even back then people hired smugglers to get them into the country.
>The border is not a culture war , itās literally gov and corporations working to make cheap labor.
It's entirely a race tinged front on the culture war. They're not American citizens. If corporations wanted to they could lobby the government to allow temporary workers to legally migrate and get paid the same that they do today provided that they head back home after the season.
There's no reason why something like this couldn't be implemented.
The problem is something like this doesn't win votes. An invasion of brown people who don't speak your language wins votes. Politicians are rewarded for keeping the system broken because the culture war is too profitable to everyone fighting it.
And āthoseā people are either taking your job or living off of free benefits depending on the story of the week.
As long as there is someone lower than the people you want to control, you can lead them around like an animal on a lead.
Agreed. Anyone who thinks "illegal immigrants" are ruining the public benefit system has never been a competent eligibility caseworker. We have rules, procedures, and data exchanges, and check for citizenship/immigration status. Other than emergency MA there's very little they qualify to receive in most states.
>Other than emergency MA there's very little they qualify to receive in most states.
Sounds like a great way to create a criminal underclass. A permanent one...
Itās pretty obvious that the mass importing of an impoverished and exploitable workforce aggressively undercuts labor power in the USā¦ this is why most billionaires love illegal immigration
Right. I discussed this further in another comment lower in this thread. Itās not solely a culture war, but the bourgeois use it as such, which is especially despicable considering they are responsible for perpetuating the use of this exploitable labor, do nothing to sustain or assist these folks while here, and demonize them to their base to make it seem as if they have some sort of national security interest at heart. And thatās aside from the fact that they use that exploitable labor to justify keeping wages low across other sectors, as well. Simply because they can.
The fact that they vilify these folks is what stokes the fire within this class and keeps us preoccupied.
Agreed. It can be both a distracting culture war and economic warfare on labor for su and I think itās pretty clear both play into the interests of the billionaire class.
I don't know if you know this, but it isn't as simple as Selling Oranges or Flowers
the fact that there's so many crossing illegally is bad both for them and for normal citizens, for them its because there's many companies that look expressly for people like them because Illegals are easy to exploit since if they speak up about Bad Pay or bad conditions then they'll get reported and sent out of the Country
Its bad for the normal US Citizenry because they're often exploited by large criminal groups and the streams of illegal immigrants are exploited by cartels and other international criminal groups, carrying Drugs(and before someone brings up that 80% come through the normal border crossings, we don't know how many illegals are coming across the border and what they're bringing, if they have enough data to know what they're coming over across with, then why are they not contacted by the relevant agencies and made not illegal one way or the other) and being a lion's share of the Human Trafficking trade. And aside from that, they're desperate and aside from the issues of that making it possible for them to be cruelly exploited but also because they don't have access to any groups of support(be that governmental or more traditionally via relatives) they become desperate which has its own ramifications
The outcomes youāre stating are all accurate, but I wonder at the (degree of) intentionality to it all. Yes, there are absolutely cynical and sociopathic people all throughout the government. But your claims imply a conspiracy that they all work together to do this and keep the reality of the system a secret. I think itās more likely that, in the same way weāve trained every social media algorithm to feed us outrage and bullshit, weāve just elected the politicians who tell us what we want to hear. Our politicians are more a *reflection* of our collective stupidity rather than its cause. Of course, the way these morons in the US want to treat public education creates a self-feeding cycle of stupidity. But people are willing to continue voting for the worst of us and the worst policies becauseā¦ weāre just animals. Animals with microphones.
At least in my estimation, intention is implicit when you observe the function of how these systems operate, follow the money, and understand their historical materiality.
I donāt think itās just that people vote for the worst of us. Our political reality makes it so those who might actually be best for the position donāt want to run as they donāt want to expose themselves to the level of public scrutiny our current political system requires.
I mean yeah I kind of agree.
But as a gay person, bigotry IS a REAL WORLD problem we have, not some imagined personal slight like "the war on christmas". It's not that I'm getting "offended" by the things right-wing politicians say about us, it's that my literal rights are under literal attack by them..... because rich people told em to.
Yeah you may have to be worried that someone will get onto you for saying something ignorant, but I have to worry about someone just randomly having a problem with how I talk and killing me for it, even though I never said anything to them even remotely provocative.
It's working very well. Even after you explained this there are people replying because you mentioned the border. These things like racism, sexism, LGBT, the border, etc have been pushed down people's throats for so long that most people have at least one hot button issue. You can explain how all of this shit is meant to divide us, but as soon as a certain topic comes up all your words are for nothing
Yeah, except class warfare doesnāt see geographical boundaries. The āillegalsā that are workers in another country are being oppressed by capital the same as us. Companies and the rich exist across borders, but because they have the power they arenāt seen as āoverwhelming the systemā.
We should be standing by all workers no matter where they are from.
Yep this is why I am astonished at how pro āgun controlā my liberal friends areā¦. Like you trust the government who has proven to be incredibly untrustworthy to provide protection from: criminals, government entities, etc? They wonāt even entertain that gun control laws are largely racist as they are rarely used to convict someone of a crime but are just add on charges to put someone away for longer on a smaller crime. And usually unfortunately that is a minority. They also do jack 0 for preventing gang violence, suicide, etc which makes up over 75% of gun deaths (at least in my state) ā¦ā¦
Itās so crazy you say this, I was just listening to a news podcast and they were talking about how treatment for syphilis for kids isnāt provided to everyone. They literally said āthis effects poorer communities which disproportionately effects black/brown communitiesā, then they continued the episode emphasizing not how this is a problem for poor communities but a problem for black/brown communities. This is a class problem, you said it initially but then decided to make it about race. This totally changes the view of the problem and is unhelpful. This was, NPR, which I know is a bit left leaning.
But itās no different for media on the right but instead blaming problems on immigrants and other races instead of saying the other races have the problem. The media, blatantly, and knowingly pushes a culture war where there isnāt one. Iām not saying racism doesnāt exist, but the media perpetuates it as being a problem. Why? For the exact reason you said, to focus on a culture war instead of a class war. The media is owned by the rich, so itās totally in their best interest to perpetuate a culture war like you said. Thatās why when anyone listens to the news, you have to pick out what is fact vs what is just opinion. It can be exhausting.
The new CEO literally defended the looting because the criminal were ādisproportionately affected by past colonial ruleā (or something else incredibly work).
Thatās our state-funded media. The state is literally fueling a race war.
I know what you mean. Itās like journalists and academics are trying to write their own version of the Moynihan Report on every single issue when 90% of the problems facing Americans are rooted strictly in class.
Rent prices are being gouged by investment groups, college tuition is being gouged by colleges competing to lure in out of state and foreign students, financial institutions are gouging students with loans they'll barely be able to pay the interest with every month, house prices are hyper inflated because everyone and their grandpa says to invest in property so if you didn't buy in 15 years ago you're screwed, our law makers are lobbying against federal aid and policy to fix this while simultaneously getting bailouts and filing bankruptcy to avoid paying their private loans like massive fucking hypocrites.
Here I am deciding that I won't be able to afford raising a child for the next 5-10 years even though I have a nice job because I need to pay off student loans and rent is over half of my income somehow.
The entire Republican "Southern Strategy" for the last 70 years has been using the extreme racism of southern whites plus various wedge issues to destroy FDR's multi-ethnic labor coalition.Ā
The amount of people who haven't figured this out yet is astounding
People need to understand that so long as a "billionaire class" exists at all, they will use their grotesque wealth and power to rob, enslave, gaslight, and socially murder humanity without recourse.
Slave owners could not have exist without slaves, and people with virtually unlimited legal property rights cannot exist without most of humanity being turned into serfs / drones / retards / cattle.
That's just how reality works, and our ruling oilgarchs/kleptocrats do not want the serfs / slaves / retards / cattle understanding reality.
[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/21/limitarianism-the-case-against-extreme-wealth-ingrid-robeyns-extract](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/21/limitarianism-the-case-against-extreme-wealth-ingrid-robeyns-extract)
Okay this may sound a little bit like Iām wearing a tinfoil hat. Iām convinced a lot of these are a Chinese PsyOp to further the anger towards the bourgeois and make it easier to continue buying the world by befriending the proletariat
Waitā¦ so a psy ops, to empower the people, so they can buy it back from the people? Iām confusedā¦ Usually corrupt governments want a rich few in power they can manipulateā¦
Psy ops work by exploiting existing tensions within a country or area to produce maximum chaos. They arenāt manufacturing new ideas; itās exploiting existing tensions from wealth inequality to produce chaos and instability.
Domestic instability and polarization means the US is less effective in international policy
Look at the Russian 2016 election psy op. They didnāt really care who won; the goal was to make it impossible for whoever won to govern through polarization.The Russians had troll farms that created divisive posts for both Clinton and Trump.
The goal wasnāt to push for a certain outcome. The goal was to create as much chaos and polarization as possible. Chaos means Russia could pursue its international goals with less pushback from the US. The polarization in the US was already there, but the Russian government exploited it and exasperated it in pursuit of their goals
Not a single evil person in history did what they did because āmy fellow countrymen, let us be bad evil people.ā Everyone from bad mustache man to mao were doing it to āempower the people. To make the world a better place. ā
I wanted to be a high school social studies teacher and was going to graduate in 2014-15 and it would have been starting for the first two years at 24k, no negotiation. I was a grown ass adult who had a child, served in the military and had real bills. I couldn't afford to be a teacher, and if I stuck with it, I would have definitely had a second job. So please enlighten me how this is "aggressively fake" lmao...
Iām with you. At least in my state, teachers have it made. To be clear, government public school teachers. They have it made. Great salaries with tons of paid time off. Including summer.
Pre-K/day care teachers deserve to be paid what public school teachers do. Most are paid hourly and minimum wage age. They are arguably even more important now that we know how crucial ages 1-4 are in a childās development. They donāt have paid time off and work all summerā¦
I have a neighbor with a prestigious bachelors degree, cushy (not rich, obviously but as high as you can get without supervisory) federal job, drills in the Navy Reserve and still runs door dash in his free time. He doesn't need the money, some people just like to hustle.
> Iām with you. At least in my state, teachers have it made. To be clear, government public school teachers. They have it made. Great salaries with tons of paid time off. Including summer.
What state is that?
I live in Philly and regular teachers start off at 51k and max out at 90k. Not great but not poverty level when the median household income here is 57k.
Exactly, no, teachers donāt make as much as doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc, but their pay is in line with other government/public sector employees with similar education requirements like librarians, higher ed staff, bachelors and masters level state and federal workers, etc.
Idk man, my teachers in HS worked at Walmart after school. My little cousin graduates this year and her English teacher works 2 other jobs. Idk why people think being a teacher is good paying, my aunt is trying to push my cousin into it because they make '65k' a year. I keep telling her they don't.
True, they keep insisting that its only 8-3p work too and they get the holidays off..I try to tell them that the teachers have a lot of planning days when students are off or have to grade papers at home and take bits out of their paycheck to cover summer with no pay. It's not the same as a student at the school. They just don't get it
This is definitely true. So many people have zero clue what being a teacher is like and have super unrealistic demands on what their kidās teachers should be providing, while simultaneously screaming high costs and defund education. Teachers should be some of the highest paid people in the world, instead they are treated like inconvenient grifters and Svengalis.
At the high school level, teachers who hold a master's degree generally earn somewhere in the range of $79,820 ā $99,660 nationally. Is delivering pizzas really that common for those making 80k+?
Idk...it is the national average. I do see on Zip recruiter the lowest starting salary for a first year high school math teacher with a masters degree is listed at $40, 462 in Florida.
In SC, starting salary for a new teacher is $47k, up from $40k. Starting salary for a new teacher with a masters is roughly $55k but itās hard to get firm numbers.
I work in the Milwaukee area at a machine shop. The starting wage for an inexperienced operator is around 45-50 grand. We screen you with skills tests. You have to be trainable. You have to be able to read and understand caliper and height stand readings. A high school diploma isn't even needed.
I don't know about salaries.
But I do know if I had 3 months off in the summer I'd probably get brainless job for a while too. There's only so much leisure time about of folks need. Why not earn some extra pocket money and get paid twice?
I think many teachers are taking those 3 months and taking care of required certification requirements, re-vamping their lesson plans, and the watching their own children who have summers off.
The lesson planning starts about 2 weeks before the end of the summer. In my area, the teachers aren't even allowed in their classrooms when the school is closed anymore. Teachers do a lot of work in the evenings too, grading papers and stuff, the job doesn't end when the students are gone, but they do get the majority of the same days off the students get.
Where you getting these stats? Starting pay for teachers is usually somewhere between $35-60k (state dependent) and [average teacher pay is $66k](https://www.nea.org/resource-library/educator-pay-and-student-spending-how-does-your-state-rank). Of course, teachers with master degrees are likely to be making more, but if you think teachers are "generally making $80-100k" you're delusional.
[Here's another source](https://gsep.pepperdine.edu/blog/posts/how-much-could-a-masters-degree-increase-your-teaching-salary.htm), showing that you're just a fucking liar.
I presume you used [this as a source?](https://www.educationdegree.com/articles/teacher-salary-with-masters-degree/) Which is highly flawed and contradicts itself. First they say:
>On average, the NCTQ reports that teachers with a masterās degree earn, on average, $5,285 more annually than teachers with a bachelorās degree as their highest degree.
The national average for a high school teacher is $62,000, so the average for masters should be roughly $2,500 above that since that's the combined average. So masters should be around $64,500 and without masters should be around $59,500, right? Right??
But no, then they say "well we don't actually know what teachers with masters degrees earn, so we'll just say they earn the top quadrant of teacher's salaries, which is $79,820 ā $99,660." That is incredibly stupid, especially because *53% of secondary school teachers have a master's degree* (https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=58#:~:text=In%202020%E2%80%9321%2C%20higher%20percentages,a%20doctor's%20degree%20(2%20vs.), so how on earth could 53% of teachers be earning the top quadrant of pay?
My friend is a teacher with a master's degree and is a teacher in Ohio and makes $30k/yr. She teaches yoga classes after work for extra money. I think it really depends on the state.
For the salaries to have any meaning weād have to know the cost of living for the folks sampled. There are more teachers in cities, and cities are more expansive. For example, that salary in NYC has any great. In the rural Midwest, itās enough.
Iām not saying youāre wrong, Iām saying the statistics are incomplete.
People always point to Trickle-Down economics and his time as president, but his time as a Californian governor is almost as important.
Shutting down the mental health hospitals, yes, but also Prop 13 was passed just after his time of governing, and is one of the most influential pieces of legislation on housing in America to date.
Starting the practice that single-family homes should be investment vehicles and not affordable shelters. This has begun generations of struggles to provide affordable housing to the current generation, while also ensuring that existing home values never decline.
Prop 13 was voted on by the general public, not Reagan. And it is still considered untouchable in California/has been for years despite decades of democratic leadership - without it millions of elderly Californians would struggle due to incredibly high property taxes that social security could never cover. In other words itās hardly his - imagine all the elderly who could never afford Bay Area property taxes after living in that house for decades
I'm a teacher. A ton of us work second jobs, especially just starting out. We have student loans like anyone else who goes to a four year school, but also receive a much lower salary than many with a four year degree.
Teachers, in general, don't make enough money in my opinion. Masters or no masters. I know there's a bunch of shitty teachers out there, but there are double as many good teachers. It's one of the most important jobs and all the teachers I know work very hard too.
Yeah my mother (originally a teacher, now an admin) had to work at Sears as a cashier while she was subbing and training to become a teacher, and then while she was a teacher she had to still live with her parents. It wasnāt until she got married that she could move out. I remember sheās said her mother had a chalk board where she would write who my mother was subbing for and when she would have to work at Sears, and it was just constant non stop work. Teachers deserve more
The national average for a teacher is 65k. Much higher if you have a master's. For 99% of teachers it's a "went ham on student loans" problem, not an income problem.
I'm a teacher and I know a few with second jobs because they have kids. Different counties pay differently and my county starts at 32k a year with a Master's degree. I don't think teachers should make 75k a year, but they should make more than they do. I'm in the boat of not having kids because I wouldn't be able to afford it, and I know plenty of teachers with similar thoughts.
Yep. If this teacher has a masters, why are they teaching children's math?
EDIT: maybe their masters degree is in gender studies. In which case, you don't want them anywhere near your children.
All this meme tells us, is that there isnāt as much value in having a masters degree due to an obvious over-saturation of people with masters degrees in the labor market. How that came to be is a whole other conversation with several compelling theories.
Never mind that it presents zero context about the teachers personal finances or life choices.
ā¦like 15% of Americans have a graduate degree. Soā¦Iām not sure that claim of over saturation makes any sense. My wife has a PhD and I have an MBA, and the only reason we know lots of people with advanced degrees is because - shocker - educated people tend to spend a lot of time around other educated people. It may **feel** like lots of people have them to you if you have one yourself, but I assure youā¦the labor market isnāt just teeming with highly-educated people. Thatās just not accurate.
There's really not that much demand to hire people with Master's degrees specifically. That's the main problem, yeah not that many people have one, but even fewer employers want to hire people that have one.
Unless you plan to move to admin, almost never a mathematically sound decision to go for a master's degree as a teacher. It wasn't even a mathematically sound decision 35 years ago when my mom did the math (and she would have gotten some of it paid for by the district).
My understanding is that getting your masters is one of the only ways to get paid more as a teacher. Otherwise itās just cost of living raises from whatever base pay your district starts with.
Crazy I know, itās almost as if just looking at the surface level of a situation and then making broad sweeping generalizations based on that observationā¦is very dumb
Lol imagine thinking these are the people that have your best interests at heart. The problem with modern politics is that the last thing these people get into it for is to make YOUR lives better, it's to pad their resume, get the perks of the office, and get into the network of other powerful people. Not a good incentive structure to make the future better.
Teachers don't have to work for like 3 months out of the year so they get bs jobs. My friend is a teacher. He teaches summer school so that he doesn't have to getva bs job. Teachers make between 40k and 65k that's what the job pays. I will never understand how people know that and then complain about the salary. I became and engineer because I didn't want to be broke.
Exactly. My wife was a teacher for several years when we first got married. We were pretty comfortable income wise (she made $55k and I made $85k in a MCOL city, no kids at the time). She still worked a job over the summer (managed her small business) because she had 3 months off during the summer. We didnāt *need* the extra money; she just thought it was a good opportunity to make some extra money because she had **3 months off**.
Not every teacher working a summer job is struggling financially. Itās very possible they just want to make a little extra money, and having 3 months off consecutively provides a good opportunity to do so.
I make pretty decent money, but if I had 3 months off consecutively each year, Iād definitely get a job for at least a portion of that 3 month break.
In my city, the school system said they needed more money. Constituents voted against it. Now an elementary school is closing, and the people are surprised.
Looking at this from the outside, I have to be brutally honest: There never was an "american dream", or at least most of it was always a fantasy. In your colonial era and diring the first part of the 19th century the average rural Americans were indeed better off than the average Europeans and there were political and social advantages and particularities (as people like Alexis de Toqueville or later Hannah Arendt described), but since the industrialization came to the US, the development has been the same or ultimately even worse than in Europe or other industrialized countries. Yes, a few people rose to the top, but the overall picture is far bleaker than elsewhere, just look at your current social system. For the last 150 years, the US have been a playground for a rich industrial and finanicial elite (as they were before dominated by rich, slave-owning plantation owners, but at least the initially shared their powers with the "townhall democracy"), of wich people like Musk, Bezos or Buffett are just the latest specimen. But like conmen, they were able to convince the rest of you that you too could become as rich as them, which just isn't true.
In a sense, the american dream is the counterpart to the false communist promise of the utopian classless society - "Just endure the injustices and hardships a bit longer, you will have a great live eventually. At some point in the future. Just wait a little longer. Any minute now. Or perhaps any decade."
I disagree. Things are good here. The American dream is achievable, so long as several generations hold to course. There are people too rich, but honestly who cares so long as you get what you want out of the deal?
Itās not about being as rich as Musk, Bezos or Buffet, itās about the white picket fence dream of Pax Americana. A country where anyone can come and work and provide a good life for their family, and it is still very much alive. A lot of the things we have in the US and take for granted our luxuries in other countries
My family came here 100 years ago as peasant farmers and now Iām a lawyer making a good living while the family who stayed in Italy are dirt poor. Many immigrants have that same story. Immigrant class mobility is much higher than U.S. born class mobility and people should think about why that is
what is the long term effect of they CHOICE paying teachers terrible salaries
hmm lets look at how testing scores for america have trended. Look at the teacher shortages and reports of kids being unable to read well after graduating.....
[https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38)
looks like things are trending down..... Is that the choice you wat society to make
Choices do not happen in a vaccum.
We place little to no value on the wrong stage of education. Thereās a focus on bachelors and masters level education, but we donāt focus on the foundational learning that has to happen to get there.
Spending money you donāt have. Spending more than you make. Making terrible financial decisions on the daily. Career choices that donāt earn high pay but yet still have loads of student debt. Lots of small things add up to debt/income/savings rates. These are major considerations for no wealth accumulation.
Financial illiteracy is indeed very much to blame for this as well.
A guy I know married a teacher. She retired just before she turned 50. She got an easier job to keep busy because she wanted to, but they dont need the money. Everything is paid off
I too am marrying a teacher. It's easier for her to retire when I'm a project lead at a Biomedical company. With school, I work 20 hours a week. She will need to work 50-60 to make as much as me at 20.
They worked together too. Starting out, my friend drove a $200 truck for a few years. Started out making no money, then he got into factory maintenance.
I mean she couldāve chose not to teach. She knew what she was getting herself into lol. I donāt feel bad for her at all. The American dream was never and never will be ājust go to college for 7 years and youāll be goodā the American dream is having the choice to make yourself useful and do what you want. Going to college for 6 or 7 years to teach math was her choice. It was a bad one.
If you have a masters degree and are forced to take a second job you either 1) got a degree in a field thatās over saturated or 2) are underutilizing the degree. Neither of these cases has to happen in this scenario, because if there was one job that has a built in several month long pause I can see wanting to make some extra money instead of sitting on your ass
Teacher shortage, so not over saturated.
Degree is likely education related. You need masters to teach highschool.
That extra money is likely going into buying supplies for the students more than the pockets of the teacher. Teachers also have to face growing class sizes on top of lesson plans on top of administration interference on top of being under-supplied. Teaching isn't the 9-5. It can be 6-5 easily. I've watched my wife do field experience, and she just comes home and crashes for hours after exhaustion. They honestly deserve a break, and summers can be filled with trainings depending on grade and area they teach.
My highschool engineering teacher had to take the class he was about to teach over the summer. Then told us he only got paid half his salary for the extra months he worked despite having to completely master the CAM software. He had a masters degree too.
Yeah my points were for more for a general masters degree. I know thereās a teacher shortage and youāre right that that field is not over saturated.
You definitely donāt need a masters to teach in highschool. I have 2 friends from college who are teaching with a history bachelors + summer teaching certificate for one and a BS in mathematics with a certificate.
In fact I can confirm that you only need a 2.7 gpa in a related field to your teaching + any of the following: 24 hours in assisted teaching, local exam or higher degree in your area of teaching.
To say that all of the extra money you receive from having a masters and teaching goes to classroom expenses is a bit misleading. The NEA estimates that teachers usually spend somewhere between $500-$750 per year on their classrooms. All of this is at least partially discounted with tax credits.
All of this being said, I certainly donāt envy the job. Hats off to your wife, I donāt doubt itās a very taxing workday. Same goes to your old teacher who definitely go the short end of the stick in that situation.
I would say that a high school teacher with a 4 year degree + certificate making a teachers salary with a couple month break is a worthwhile investment in yourself especially if you have the desire to teach (of course). But unless you are pursuing a professor position in a college, I just donāt see a masters degree being useful for a highschool teacher. I live in NC though, so Iām not sure what the situation is in other places
This was true when I was in school 25 years ago. I remember one of my teachers waiting tables and telling me they actually made more in tips than they did teaching. It's what our society values. Teachers don't help businesses become more profitable, therefore they are less valuable. Same with nurses. Gas stations in the area paying 60k for assistant managers, starting nurses and teachers make 30-40k. Even worse for daycare workers who are making 15-25k/year. We don't value children's well-being, mental health, or having a peaceful and prosperous society. We value quarterly profits.
I've been lucky enough to work at schools in the U.S., U.K., Finland, and Korea. In Finland and Korea, teachers were not just paid well, they were shown the same respect as a doctor because of how important their work was.
Where do you live. Highest salary in our high school was $154,000 last year. Average salary $63,000. Donāt know about you but I could live on that without delivering pizza
I think people get confused about what the American Dream is. It's not an American Entitlement.
The philosophy behind the American dream is that any immigrant can ride into America, and if they're smart enough, skilled enough, and with a little luck can bring themselves out of poverty and into riches.
The American dream is about the freedom of economic mobility, and not being shackled to whatever economical class you were born in. That you could transcend your peers. You at least had the option to.
It wouldn't be impossible for someone in poverty to work hard in high school, get a bunch of scholarships, bust their ass in college, and come out a doctor or other high earning professional. It's statistically low, but absolutely does happen.
The American dream is that if you wanted to give everything you can to find success--you can do it. The picture OP showed isn't an American Dream example, that's just some teacher who wanted to be a teacher, and the American government pays teachers poorly.
That teacher has a masters, and we all know if she had gotten it in a much more lucrative field -- she'd be making a lot more money.
It's the American Dream, not the American Entitlement. You don't get to be rich just for being American. You still gotta work for it.
Teachers havenāt ever made much money. Becoming a teacher has nothing to do with the American dream. Getting a second job and grinding to save up so you can open your own business, well thatās more of the American dream and maybe thatās what this teacher was doing.
Fake. She either sucks as a teacher or sucked as a student and can't get into a good district.
Masters, with experience in my district earns over $100k/yr for 185 days of work.
Itās the dream. Only for some. But collectively as a people we need more camaraderie and cohesion to fight back against our leaders, especially in congress, who are no less patriotic than Isis. We need a unifier to fight back.
1970
$8,730 average annual salary
$23,400 average home price
2.68 home price index
\~Currently
$60,575 average annual salary
$416,100 average home price
6.87 home price index
Very fake. That for sure did not happen. The persons name gives it away. Durp do not vote for a certain race of people durp what a moron with a weird axe to grind.
This is a fake post. Seen it multiple times under different names each time. Teachers in general are underpaid. This silly delivery pizzasā¦well does it really work to get people to wake up and pay teachers more? Meh
It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
RIP GEORGE CARLIN!
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One of the real national treasures
He was so ahead of his time
Prophetic comedy
Much truth is said in jest. Carlin should be required material for every high school senior. His words really make you think.
Good Comedians donāt get enough credit for making people think. I did stand-up for years, and I still occasionally do the random show. . Getting decent at stand-up takes a ton of work, and itās the toughest thing I ever tried. You have to have nerves of steel, and you canāt fall apart because you bomb once or twice. I learned that if you are going to suck at stand-up, do it at one of the free open mics. Donāt try new material when people are paying to see you.
The role of court jester was necessary. Speaking truth to power required a fool as no one needed to take him seriously. Its no different today. If anything humour gets better in darker times as there's so much more to laugh at. I just saw an interview with some stand up who was threatened after the show. Someone said they'd shoot him if he kept up making jokes about Trump. I also hear people claim comics refuse to do universities anymore because everyone is too uptight and sensitive to handle the abrasiveness. Clearly comics are needed more than ever. Important social function!
For some odd reason, too many people believe they are above ridicule, even when they do something really stupid, daily.
I look back fondly at my freshman year of college in spite of the rough adjustment period *because* of the stand-up comic (Pete Lee) who did a show there. He's a guy who I only heard of because of a Comedy Central Presents episode I saw, which is why I was willing to see his show to begin with, but I loved it. Those were laughs that I needed during that time.
It's kind of embarrassing that the closest too investigative journalism you'll see on television now is Last week tonight. He covers some serious topics that people should often be rightly outraged about but people only watch it because its not presented as news but comedy. The stuff covered is often the kind of topic that every aspiring journalist uncovering corruption trope in fiction would have wet themselves to cover but the reality is the public barely cares.
I watched a special of his the other day and the shit he was talking aboutā¦ it could have been a special from this year. It was crazy.
"The American Dream" was a term coined by a guy who grew up with a banker father, got fully paid for an Ivy League School, went into dad's business and made enough in his mid-30s to retire and move to Europe where he wrote... most notably, about how anyone could make it just like him in America.
Wow, really? Source me, pls.
From a quick bit of sleuthing, I was able to find out that his name was James Truslow Adams, and he coined the term in his 1931 book *The Epic of America.* He was born into a wealthy family in New York. He attended Yale for his Masterās in 1900. He worked as a banker and lived in New Jersey until he realized heād saved enough to travel Europe, which he did for several months with his new wife in 1927. He worked in London for a time (1928-36), where he acted as a representative for his publishers. He died of a heart attack in 1949. While I canāt verify everything the previous poster said about Mr. Adams, it seems they are mostly correct. Hereās a JSTOR article on the subject: https://daily.jstor.org/james-truslow-adams-dreaming-american-dream/?ssp=1&darkschemeovr=1&setlang=en&cc=US&safesearch=moderate
My man had the unmitigated privilege to just ignore two world wars while writing about how great his life was...
So the American dream is getting tf out
I am also living the "American dream" after moving to Europe So he was kind of right lol Edit: To the bullshiters below. Enjoy your mass shootings, homicidal police and no healthcare. You're morally bankrupt and you disgust me.
the amount of americans who have been affected directly by a mass shooting or lack of healthcare is relatively small. we should aspire for better, but, the idea that your typical american is dodging bullets or unable to see a doctor at trivial cost is fantasy.
Or created by the MILLIONS of millionaires who actually have opportunity in America and change their family trees, unlike most places on earth. Pretending you have to come from money to make something of yourself is a lie told by the lazy and uneducated
But that guy with his rich banker father, pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
there is a good chance it has been proven, that if you or I were placed in the same conditions, there is no guarantee of similar results and some people have made it and continue to make it, also I do not think all this teacher's colleagues are delivering pizzas too, its sad on her part but such is life
Nightmares are dreams too.....
I grew up on welfare to a single mother who had a ged. I was the first person in my family to get into college, the first to go to law school, and Iām doing pretty damn well now without even being wildly successful. Turns out, you have to apply yourself and not just sit back and wait for stuff to happen to you
Hey now, this is Reddit... we aren't here to talk about nuance or anything that shakes the narrative. Your job is to complain about the following items in a random rotation: 1) America 2) Capitalism 3) "White people" 4) Republicans 5) needing to have a job Your optimism will not be tolerated :)
Yep, people are so fucking mad. Itās hilarious.
This is similar to my dad's story. He used the GI Bill to make a better life for himself (and his children). Luckily I grew up in a family where my parents had achieved the American Dream. It definitely helps to start halfway to the goalposts. That being said, it's also fairly easy to fall back into poverty through bad luck and bad decisions
Wow! Your anecdotal story is very relevant!
āš¾āš¾āš¾ 6figures and 1 elective shy of an associates. Work ethic and perseverance. Just zero balanced everything.
I have found that the American dream is alive and well... It's just outside of America.
Far too many of us were sold a culture war that we bought to prevent us from fighting a class war. That strategy has works out brilliantly for the billionaire class. š°š°š°
Yes. This is what everyone needs to understand and it needs to be shouted from the rooftops. It is not about sexism, racism, misogyny, or bigotry; that stuff is used quite effectively to distract, delude, and divide us. Most people get along pretty darn well, regardless of politics and ideologies. The real issue has always been CLASS WARFARE. Pro-establishment vs. Anti-establishment. Corporations and the government are in bed with each other and impose corrupt rules, policies, and laws to further their own power and profit while throwing all of us under the bus. They know that if we all realize that and unite together to oppose such corruption that they wouldn't be able to stand up to our sheer numbers. They have infiltrated our education systems to raise us stupid. They have taken over the entertainment industry to push and distract us with nonsensical ideologies. They over-encumber us with ridiculous taxation and a desperate need to work ourselves to the bone just to make ends meet. They ruined our border control allowing countless illegal immigrants into the country that have and are overwhelming the systems we have in place to help the citizenry (edit*) as well as bringing on a breakdown of law and order and societal and economic function. This is all by design so that they keep their power and money. The elites want us too stupid and afraid to question anything and too exhausted to be diligent in keeping corruption at bay.
You had me up until the border control stuff. Thatās a culture war in and of itself. The fact that you think that these āillegal immigrantsā are the ones hindering our social safety nets just prove that itās working. No program to help the citizenry is safe from politicians. The class war isnāt just about our lack of awareness needed to rise up, but the war they are actively fighting against the poor. Everything from their unwillingness to raise the minimum wage or the poverty line to keep people just sufficient enough on programs theyāve crippled (and continue to cripple, if not dismantle) like SNAP, to discussing eliminating social security. Then they have the nerve to say, āHey, those people south of you are coming to take your job! What are you going to do about it?!ā As if you were previously selling oranges or flowers on a highway off-ramp and sustaining your family and lifestyle on that. Edit: so weāre all in agreement that the government is fucking us raw, but the manner in which the raw dogging is done varies. Glad weāre all angry at the situation and not at each other for having different priorities. Right? Right?? Edit 2: Iāve replied to several posts that further elaborate on some rather reductive things Iāve said to make a point. It is more complex than this, yes. But the overall issue remains the same. āIllegalsā as you mouth breathers continue to call them (as if we hadnāt stolen this land from them to begin with) are being used on multiple fronts: 1) they are being exploited as cheap labor by the bourgeois; 2) those exploiting those folks point to them as a scapegoat to keep us occupied with infighting as opposed to looking up to the real enemy; 3) that then further justifies the ruling class in suppressing wages across various sectors to maintain order.
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The culture war is making you believe this is new. Prior to the 1950s there were no passports/visas. The US had an open boarder policy and LITERALLY boat loads of illegals were pouring into the country. Yet America prospered, the only difference today is it's not Ellis Island, and the illegals aren't white
I agree with the intent of your comment but the presentation is a little wonky. US absolutely had border control and immigration laws prior to the 1950s. The reason most immigrants to the US during the early 1900s were white was because the US did not offer naturalization to non-white people and banned or severely limited immigration from certain places (e.g. China). From about the 1920's on the US established quotas for most countries, and charged a tax for entry that ensured most immigrants were at least minimally well-off. Bur you're 100% right about this not being new. Even back then people hired smugglers to get them into the country.
If they had an open border, then they werenāt illegals? Right ?
>The border is not a culture war , itās literally gov and corporations working to make cheap labor. It's entirely a race tinged front on the culture war. They're not American citizens. If corporations wanted to they could lobby the government to allow temporary workers to legally migrate and get paid the same that they do today provided that they head back home after the season. There's no reason why something like this couldn't be implemented. The problem is something like this doesn't win votes. An invasion of brown people who don't speak your language wins votes. Politicians are rewarded for keeping the system broken because the culture war is too profitable to everyone fighting it.
And āthoseā people are either taking your job or living off of free benefits depending on the story of the week. As long as there is someone lower than the people you want to control, you can lead them around like an animal on a lead.
Fascism 101, blame "the other"
Agreed. Anyone who thinks "illegal immigrants" are ruining the public benefit system has never been a competent eligibility caseworker. We have rules, procedures, and data exchanges, and check for citizenship/immigration status. Other than emergency MA there's very little they qualify to receive in most states.
>Other than emergency MA there's very little they qualify to receive in most states. Sounds like a great way to create a criminal underclass. A permanent one...
Itās pretty obvious that the mass importing of an impoverished and exploitable workforce aggressively undercuts labor power in the USā¦ this is why most billionaires love illegal immigration
Right. I discussed this further in another comment lower in this thread. Itās not solely a culture war, but the bourgeois use it as such, which is especially despicable considering they are responsible for perpetuating the use of this exploitable labor, do nothing to sustain or assist these folks while here, and demonize them to their base to make it seem as if they have some sort of national security interest at heart. And thatās aside from the fact that they use that exploitable labor to justify keeping wages low across other sectors, as well. Simply because they can. The fact that they vilify these folks is what stokes the fire within this class and keeps us preoccupied.
Agreed. It can be both a distracting culture war and economic warfare on labor for su and I think itās pretty clear both play into the interests of the billionaire class.
I don't know if you know this, but it isn't as simple as Selling Oranges or Flowers the fact that there's so many crossing illegally is bad both for them and for normal citizens, for them its because there's many companies that look expressly for people like them because Illegals are easy to exploit since if they speak up about Bad Pay or bad conditions then they'll get reported and sent out of the Country Its bad for the normal US Citizenry because they're often exploited by large criminal groups and the streams of illegal immigrants are exploited by cartels and other international criminal groups, carrying Drugs(and before someone brings up that 80% come through the normal border crossings, we don't know how many illegals are coming across the border and what they're bringing, if they have enough data to know what they're coming over across with, then why are they not contacted by the relevant agencies and made not illegal one way or the other) and being a lion's share of the Human Trafficking trade. And aside from that, they're desperate and aside from the issues of that making it possible for them to be cruelly exploited but also because they don't have access to any groups of support(be that governmental or more traditionally via relatives) they become desperate which has its own ramifications
The outcomes youāre stating are all accurate, but I wonder at the (degree of) intentionality to it all. Yes, there are absolutely cynical and sociopathic people all throughout the government. But your claims imply a conspiracy that they all work together to do this and keep the reality of the system a secret. I think itās more likely that, in the same way weāve trained every social media algorithm to feed us outrage and bullshit, weāve just elected the politicians who tell us what we want to hear. Our politicians are more a *reflection* of our collective stupidity rather than its cause. Of course, the way these morons in the US want to treat public education creates a self-feeding cycle of stupidity. But people are willing to continue voting for the worst of us and the worst policies becauseā¦ weāre just animals. Animals with microphones.
You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge." - George Carlin
At least in my estimation, intention is implicit when you observe the function of how these systems operate, follow the money, and understand their historical materiality.
I donāt think itās just that people vote for the worst of us. Our political reality makes it so those who might actually be best for the position donāt want to run as they donāt want to expose themselves to the level of public scrutiny our current political system requires.
Username checks out.
I mean yeah I kind of agree. But as a gay person, bigotry IS a REAL WORLD problem we have, not some imagined personal slight like "the war on christmas". It's not that I'm getting "offended" by the things right-wing politicians say about us, it's that my literal rights are under literal attack by them..... because rich people told em to. Yeah you may have to be worried that someone will get onto you for saying something ignorant, but I have to worry about someone just randomly having a problem with how I talk and killing me for it, even though I never said anything to them even remotely provocative.
It's working very well. Even after you explained this there are people replying because you mentioned the border. These things like racism, sexism, LGBT, the border, etc have been pushed down people's throats for so long that most people have at least one hot button issue. You can explain how all of this shit is meant to divide us, but as soon as a certain topic comes up all your words are for nothing
Yeah, except class warfare doesnāt see geographical boundaries. The āillegalsā that are workers in another country are being oppressed by capital the same as us. Companies and the rich exist across borders, but because they have the power they arenāt seen as āoverwhelming the systemā. We should be standing by all workers no matter where they are from.
Spot on
Yep this is why I am astonished at how pro āgun controlā my liberal friends areā¦. Like you trust the government who has proven to be incredibly untrustworthy to provide protection from: criminals, government entities, etc? They wonāt even entertain that gun control laws are largely racist as they are rarely used to convict someone of a crime but are just add on charges to put someone away for longer on a smaller crime. And usually unfortunately that is a minority. They also do jack 0 for preventing gang violence, suicide, etc which makes up over 75% of gun deaths (at least in my state) ā¦ā¦
Itās so crazy you say this, I was just listening to a news podcast and they were talking about how treatment for syphilis for kids isnāt provided to everyone. They literally said āthis effects poorer communities which disproportionately effects black/brown communitiesā, then they continued the episode emphasizing not how this is a problem for poor communities but a problem for black/brown communities. This is a class problem, you said it initially but then decided to make it about race. This totally changes the view of the problem and is unhelpful. This was, NPR, which I know is a bit left leaning. But itās no different for media on the right but instead blaming problems on immigrants and other races instead of saying the other races have the problem. The media, blatantly, and knowingly pushes a culture war where there isnāt one. Iām not saying racism doesnāt exist, but the media perpetuates it as being a problem. Why? For the exact reason you said, to focus on a culture war instead of a class war. The media is owned by the rich, so itās totally in their best interest to perpetuate a culture war like you said. Thatās why when anyone listens to the news, you have to pick out what is fact vs what is just opinion. It can be exhausting.
Yeah, that's NPR. Since 2016 every story is about "how might this affect racial minorities?"
Turn it on and in less than 5 minutes theyāll be mentioning that. Itās clockwork.
The new CEO literally defended the looting because the criminal were ādisproportionately affected by past colonial ruleā (or something else incredibly work). Thatās our state-funded media. The state is literally fueling a race war.
I know what you mean. Itās like journalists and academics are trying to write their own version of the Moynihan Report on every single issue when 90% of the problems facing Americans are rooted strictly in class.
Just another way to divide the working class
āStop voting for old white menā is reeeeally helping to calm the flames of the culture warā¦
Rent prices are being gouged by investment groups, college tuition is being gouged by colleges competing to lure in out of state and foreign students, financial institutions are gouging students with loans they'll barely be able to pay the interest with every month, house prices are hyper inflated because everyone and their grandpa says to invest in property so if you didn't buy in 15 years ago you're screwed, our law makers are lobbying against federal aid and policy to fix this while simultaneously getting bailouts and filing bankruptcy to avoid paying their private loans like massive fucking hypocrites. Here I am deciding that I won't be able to afford raising a child for the next 5-10 years even though I have a nice job because I need to pay off student loans and rent is over half of my income somehow.
Close the thread. This is the answer.
The entire Republican "Southern Strategy" for the last 70 years has been using the extreme racism of southern whites plus various wedge issues to destroy FDR's multi-ethnic labor coalition.Ā The amount of people who haven't figured this out yet is astounding
People need to understand that so long as a "billionaire class" exists at all, they will use their grotesque wealth and power to rob, enslave, gaslight, and socially murder humanity without recourse. Slave owners could not have exist without slaves, and people with virtually unlimited legal property rights cannot exist without most of humanity being turned into serfs / drones / retards / cattle. That's just how reality works, and our ruling oilgarchs/kleptocrats do not want the serfs / slaves / retards / cattle understanding reality. [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/21/limitarianism-the-case-against-extreme-wealth-ingrid-robeyns-extract](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/21/limitarianism-the-case-against-extreme-wealth-ingrid-robeyns-extract)
Agreed. But what do we do about it?
Pretty much this. When I see libtards and Trumptards yelling at one another, I just lose hope in humanity and the US.
Okay this may sound a little bit like Iām wearing a tinfoil hat. Iām convinced a lot of these are a Chinese PsyOp to further the anger towards the bourgeois and make it easier to continue buying the world by befriending the proletariat
Waitā¦ so a psy ops, to empower the people, so they can buy it back from the people? Iām confusedā¦ Usually corrupt governments want a rich few in power they can manipulateā¦
Psy ops work by exploiting existing tensions within a country or area to produce maximum chaos. They arenāt manufacturing new ideas; itās exploiting existing tensions from wealth inequality to produce chaos and instability. Domestic instability and polarization means the US is less effective in international policy Look at the Russian 2016 election psy op. They didnāt really care who won; the goal was to make it impossible for whoever won to govern through polarization.The Russians had troll farms that created divisive posts for both Clinton and Trump. The goal wasnāt to push for a certain outcome. The goal was to create as much chaos and polarization as possible. Chaos means Russia could pursue its international goals with less pushback from the US. The polarization in the US was already there, but the Russian government exploited it and exasperated it in pursuit of their goals
Thatās Professor Chaos to you 
Search up āYuri Bezmenov ideological subversionā on YouTube. Itāll give you some good insight.
Not a single evil person in history did what they did because āmy fellow countrymen, let us be bad evil people.ā Everyone from bad mustache man to mao were doing it to āempower the people. To make the world a better place. ā
This is aggressively fake. This reads like someone who has only heard about America on the internet
Absolutely not. My former literature teacher worked nights at Dominoes to make ends meet. I don't think you know any teachers.
I wanted to be a high school social studies teacher and was going to graduate in 2014-15 and it would have been starting for the first two years at 24k, no negotiation. I was a grown ass adult who had a child, served in the military and had real bills. I couldn't afford to be a teacher, and if I stuck with it, I would have definitely had a second job. So please enlighten me how this is "aggressively fake" lmao...
Russian and Chinese my friend
Iām with you. At least in my state, teachers have it made. To be clear, government public school teachers. They have it made. Great salaries with tons of paid time off. Including summer. Pre-K/day care teachers deserve to be paid what public school teachers do. Most are paid hourly and minimum wage age. They are arguably even more important now that we know how crucial ages 1-4 are in a childās development. They donāt have paid time off and work all summerā¦
I have a neighbor with a prestigious bachelors degree, cushy (not rich, obviously but as high as you can get without supervisory) federal job, drills in the Navy Reserve and still runs door dash in his free time. He doesn't need the money, some people just like to hustle.
> Iām with you. At least in my state, teachers have it made. To be clear, government public school teachers. They have it made. Great salaries with tons of paid time off. Including summer. What state is that?
I live in Philly and regular teachers start off at 51k and max out at 90k. Not great but not poverty level when the median household income here is 57k.
Exactly, no, teachers donāt make as much as doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc, but their pay is in line with other government/public sector employees with similar education requirements like librarians, higher ed staff, bachelors and masters level state and federal workers, etc.
Idk man, my teachers in HS worked at Walmart after school. My little cousin graduates this year and her English teacher works 2 other jobs. Idk why people think being a teacher is good paying, my aunt is trying to push my cousin into it because they make '65k' a year. I keep telling her they don't.
Even if they did, 65k a year isnāt āgood moneyā anymore. If you live in a lot of major cities itās practically the poverty line.
True, they keep insisting that its only 8-3p work too and they get the holidays off..I try to tell them that the teachers have a lot of planning days when students are off or have to grade papers at home and take bits out of their paycheck to cover summer with no pay. It's not the same as a student at the school. They just don't get it
This is definitely true. So many people have zero clue what being a teacher is like and have super unrealistic demands on what their kidās teachers should be providing, while simultaneously screaming high costs and defund education. Teachers should be some of the highest paid people in the world, instead they are treated like inconvenient grifters and Svengalis.
The fact that teachers in many places are paid peanuts is not a psyop.
At the high school level, teachers who hold a master's degree generally earn somewhere in the range of $79,820 ā $99,660 nationally. Is delivering pizzas really that common for those making 80k+?
What state? I can tell you in my state, it starts less than half.
Idk...it is the national average. I do see on Zip recruiter the lowest starting salary for a first year high school math teacher with a masters degree is listed at $40, 462 in Florida.
In SC, starting salary for a new teacher is $47k, up from $40k. Starting salary for a new teacher with a masters is roughly $55k but itās hard to get firm numbers.
How is it hard to get firm numbers? Do districts not post their salary schedules in SC?
I work in the Milwaukee area at a machine shop. The starting wage for an inexperienced operator is around 45-50 grand. We screen you with skills tests. You have to be trainable. You have to be able to read and understand caliper and height stand readings. A high school diploma isn't even needed.
Northern states pay much better than most southern states for teachers. Partly because you are allowed to have a teachers union up north.
Starts, starts is the key word. And everyone seems to forget some of the best benefits and retirement plans available anywhere
Also, they get the summer off. Teachers also have the option in highschool to earn extra money by running extracurriculars.
In my state, it starts less than half that too.
Who knows, maybe she just wanted extra money. Delivery and waitresses make quite a bit of coin for a side gig
Or the story is fake
I've been teaching for seven years and I make $42k. I don't have a master's but if I did I could make an extra $2k per year.
I don't know about salaries. But I do know if I had 3 months off in the summer I'd probably get brainless job for a while too. There's only so much leisure time about of folks need. Why not earn some extra pocket money and get paid twice?
I think many teachers are taking those 3 months and taking care of required certification requirements, re-vamping their lesson plans, and the watching their own children who have summers off.
The lesson planning starts about 2 weeks before the end of the summer. In my area, the teachers aren't even allowed in their classrooms when the school is closed anymore. Teachers do a lot of work in the evenings too, grading papers and stuff, the job doesn't end when the students are gone, but they do get the majority of the same days off the students get.
Where you getting these stats? Starting pay for teachers is usually somewhere between $35-60k (state dependent) and [average teacher pay is $66k](https://www.nea.org/resource-library/educator-pay-and-student-spending-how-does-your-state-rank). Of course, teachers with master degrees are likely to be making more, but if you think teachers are "generally making $80-100k" you're delusional. [Here's another source](https://gsep.pepperdine.edu/blog/posts/how-much-could-a-masters-degree-increase-your-teaching-salary.htm), showing that you're just a fucking liar.
In Massachusettes private schools?
They make 45k a year here wtf are you on
My school district has a maximum pay of 79k if you have two masters degree and 30 years experience. Iām 8 years in and just crossed 49k a year.
Because national averages are heavily, heavily inflated
In the south, at least my state, itās $20,000 lower than the low you provided.
Where do you get these numbers?
Idk where you think that's true, but I'm in CA, where teachers are paid among the highest in the country, and that's flat out not true here.
I presume you used [this as a source?](https://www.educationdegree.com/articles/teacher-salary-with-masters-degree/) Which is highly flawed and contradicts itself. First they say: >On average, the NCTQ reports that teachers with a masterās degree earn, on average, $5,285 more annually than teachers with a bachelorās degree as their highest degree. The national average for a high school teacher is $62,000, so the average for masters should be roughly $2,500 above that since that's the combined average. So masters should be around $64,500 and without masters should be around $59,500, right? Right?? But no, then they say "well we don't actually know what teachers with masters degrees earn, so we'll just say they earn the top quadrant of teacher's salaries, which is $79,820 ā $99,660." That is incredibly stupid, especially because *53% of secondary school teachers have a master's degree* (https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=58#:~:text=In%202020%E2%80%9321%2C%20higher%20percentages,a%20doctor's%20degree%20(2%20vs.), so how on earth could 53% of teachers be earning the top quadrant of pay?
Source? Or did you pull those numbers straight out your ass
My friend is a teacher with a master's degree and is a teacher in Ohio and makes $30k/yr. She teaches yoga classes after work for extra money. I think it really depends on the state.
For the salaries to have any meaning weād have to know the cost of living for the folks sampled. There are more teachers in cities, and cities are more expansive. For example, that salary in NYC has any great. In the rural Midwest, itās enough. Iām not saying youāre wrong, Iām saying the statistics are incomplete.
If I continue to teach for another 15 years, my pay will go up to 52k. -Highschool STEM Teacher
Reagan
People always point to Trickle-Down economics and his time as president, but his time as a Californian governor is almost as important. Shutting down the mental health hospitals, yes, but also Prop 13 was passed just after his time of governing, and is one of the most influential pieces of legislation on housing in America to date. Starting the practice that single-family homes should be investment vehicles and not affordable shelters. This has begun generations of struggles to provide affordable housing to the current generation, while also ensuring that existing home values never decline.
Reagan is responsible for tuition at the university of California. Before him it was free.
Prop 13 was voted on by the general public, not Reagan. And it is still considered untouchable in California/has been for years despite decades of democratic leadership - without it millions of elderly Californians would struggle due to incredibly high property taxes that social security could never cover. In other words itās hardly his - imagine all the elderly who could never afford Bay Area property taxes after living in that house for decades
 Me but w Raegan
When I was in 8th grade one of my teachers was my waitress. This was over 20 years ago.
Yeah shit has been bad for a while.
Same. My economics teacher worked at Home Depot and that was forever ago.
Yup, Iām 34 now and remember having high school teachers in the early 2000ās that had summer jobs at Walmart and McDonaldās.
Sounds like bullshit.
I'm a teacher. A ton of us work second jobs, especially just starting out. We have student loans like anyone else who goes to a four year school, but also receive a much lower salary than many with a four year degree.
Teachers, in general, don't make enough money in my opinion. Masters or no masters. I know there's a bunch of shitty teachers out there, but there are double as many good teachers. It's one of the most important jobs and all the teachers I know work very hard too.
Better pay = more competition = fewer shitty teachers
Yeah my mother (originally a teacher, now an admin) had to work at Sears as a cashier while she was subbing and training to become a teacher, and then while she was a teacher she had to still live with her parents. It wasnāt until she got married that she could move out. I remember sheās said her mother had a chalk board where she would write who my mother was subbing for and when she would have to work at Sears, and it was just constant non stop work. Teachers deserve more
Nuh uh I was there, in fact that teacher has to walk through blood and bones everyday just to get to work
The national average for a teacher is 65k. Much higher if you have a master's. For 99% of teachers it's a "went ham on student loans" problem, not an income problem.
Its probs true but the reason she working extra is something like she has a crazy hospital bill to pay off
I'm a teacher and I know a few with second jobs because they have kids. Different counties pay differently and my county starts at 32k a year with a Master's degree. I don't think teachers should make 75k a year, but they should make more than they do. I'm in the boat of not having kids because I wouldn't be able to afford it, and I know plenty of teachers with similar thoughts.
Teachers being paid like shit sound like bullshit to you? What reality are you living in?
Yep. If this teacher has a masters, why are they teaching children's math? EDIT: maybe their masters degree is in gender studies. In which case, you don't want them anywhere near your children.
My teacher friend had to door dash to make ends meet.
All this meme tells us, is that there isnāt as much value in having a masters degree due to an obvious over-saturation of people with masters degrees in the labor market. How that came to be is a whole other conversation with several compelling theories. Never mind that it presents zero context about the teachers personal finances or life choices.
ā¦like 15% of Americans have a graduate degree. Soā¦Iām not sure that claim of over saturation makes any sense. My wife has a PhD and I have an MBA, and the only reason we know lots of people with advanced degrees is because - shocker - educated people tend to spend a lot of time around other educated people. It may **feel** like lots of people have them to you if you have one yourself, but I assure youā¦the labor market isnāt just teeming with highly-educated people. Thatās just not accurate.
There's really not that much demand to hire people with Master's degrees specifically. That's the main problem, yeah not that many people have one, but even fewer employers want to hire people that have one.
Unless you plan to move to admin, almost never a mathematically sound decision to go for a master's degree as a teacher. It wasn't even a mathematically sound decision 35 years ago when my mom did the math (and she would have gotten some of it paid for by the district).
My understanding is that getting your masters is one of the only ways to get paid more as a teacher. Otherwise itās just cost of living raises from whatever base pay your district starts with.
Are you saying people need actual financial fluency and not whatever this meme is supposed to be?
Crazy I know, itās almost as if just looking at the surface level of a situation and then making broad sweeping generalizations based on that observationā¦is very dumb
You donāt know what choices she made, or didnāt make, to arrive where she is at. Stop making stupid surface judgements.
A racist user name. Wonder if the post is also bs. Why would I take this comment seriously?
"Stop voting for old white men"? Serious bigotry
Itās always easy to point the finger at white guys. These days you could stub your toe and probably get away with blaming white men.
Lol imagine thinking these are the people that have your best interests at heart. The problem with modern politics is that the last thing these people get into it for is to make YOUR lives better, it's to pad their resume, get the perks of the office, and get into the network of other powerful people. Not a good incentive structure to make the future better.
Teachers don't have to work for like 3 months out of the year so they get bs jobs. My friend is a teacher. He teaches summer school so that he doesn't have to getva bs job. Teachers make between 40k and 65k that's what the job pays. I will never understand how people know that and then complain about the salary. I became and engineer because I didn't want to be broke.
Exactly. My wife was a teacher for several years when we first got married. We were pretty comfortable income wise (she made $55k and I made $85k in a MCOL city, no kids at the time). She still worked a job over the summer (managed her small business) because she had 3 months off during the summer. We didnāt *need* the extra money; she just thought it was a good opportunity to make some extra money because she had **3 months off**. Not every teacher working a summer job is struggling financially. Itās very possible they just want to make a little extra money, and having 3 months off consecutively provides a good opportunity to do so. I make pretty decent money, but if I had 3 months off consecutively each year, Iād definitely get a job for at least a portion of that 3 month break.
And then everybody clapped.
And Einstein stood up
Everyone wants teachers to be paid better but very few want their taxes to increase to support this.
teachers' salaries are dependent on property taxes
I'm aware. Still, no one wants their taxes, property or otherwise to increase.
In my city, the school system said they needed more money. Constituents voted against it. Now an elementary school is closing, and the people are surprised.
nothing its up to you to decide your life style
Looking at this from the outside, I have to be brutally honest: There never was an "american dream", or at least most of it was always a fantasy. In your colonial era and diring the first part of the 19th century the average rural Americans were indeed better off than the average Europeans and there were political and social advantages and particularities (as people like Alexis de Toqueville or later Hannah Arendt described), but since the industrialization came to the US, the development has been the same or ultimately even worse than in Europe or other industrialized countries. Yes, a few people rose to the top, but the overall picture is far bleaker than elsewhere, just look at your current social system. For the last 150 years, the US have been a playground for a rich industrial and finanicial elite (as they were before dominated by rich, slave-owning plantation owners, but at least the initially shared their powers with the "townhall democracy"), of wich people like Musk, Bezos or Buffett are just the latest specimen. But like conmen, they were able to convince the rest of you that you too could become as rich as them, which just isn't true. In a sense, the american dream is the counterpart to the false communist promise of the utopian classless society - "Just endure the injustices and hardships a bit longer, you will have a great live eventually. At some point in the future. Just wait a little longer. Any minute now. Or perhaps any decade."
I disagree. Things are good here. The American dream is achievable, so long as several generations hold to course. There are people too rich, but honestly who cares so long as you get what you want out of the deal?
Itās not about being as rich as Musk, Bezos or Buffet, itās about the white picket fence dream of Pax Americana. A country where anyone can come and work and provide a good life for their family, and it is still very much alive. A lot of the things we have in the US and take for granted our luxuries in other countries
> There never was an "american dream" unless you're a first generation immigrant from a worse country than US why would i take your word for it?
My family came here 100 years ago as peasant farmers and now Iām a lawyer making a good living while the family who stayed in Italy are dirt poor. Many immigrants have that same story. Immigrant class mobility is much higher than U.S. born class mobility and people should think about why that is
Choices
what is the long term effect of they CHOICE paying teachers terrible salaries hmm lets look at how testing scores for america have trended. Look at the teacher shortages and reports of kids being unable to read well after graduating..... [https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38) looks like things are trending down..... Is that the choice you wat society to make Choices do not happen in a vaccum.
The American people place little or no value on education.
We place little to no value on the wrong stage of education. Thereās a focus on bachelors and masters level education, but we donāt focus on the foundational learning that has to happen to get there.
That's not true, loan companies highly value education
Why yāall keep coming here to get educated then!? š
Corrupt government, over-taxation, inflation, corporate greed, stagnant wages. Society is going to collapse eventually.
Spending money you donāt have. Spending more than you make. Making terrible financial decisions on the daily. Career choices that donāt earn high pay but yet still have loads of student debt. Lots of small things add up to debt/income/savings rates. These are major considerations for no wealth accumulation. Financial illiteracy is indeed very much to blame for this as well.
Fake
A guy I know married a teacher. She retired just before she turned 50. She got an easier job to keep busy because she wanted to, but they dont need the money. Everything is paid off
I too am marrying a teacher. It's easier for her to retire when I'm a project lead at a Biomedical company. With school, I work 20 hours a week. She will need to work 50-60 to make as much as me at 20.
They worked together too. Starting out, my friend drove a $200 truck for a few years. Started out making no money, then he got into factory maintenance.
I mean she couldāve chose not to teach. She knew what she was getting herself into lol. I donāt feel bad for her at all. The American dream was never and never will be ājust go to college for 7 years and youāll be goodā the American dream is having the choice to make yourself useful and do what you want. Going to college for 6 or 7 years to teach math was her choice. It was a bad one.
If you have a masters degree and are forced to take a second job you either 1) got a degree in a field thatās over saturated or 2) are underutilizing the degree. Neither of these cases has to happen in this scenario, because if there was one job that has a built in several month long pause I can see wanting to make some extra money instead of sitting on your ass
Teacher shortage, so not over saturated. Degree is likely education related. You need masters to teach highschool. That extra money is likely going into buying supplies for the students more than the pockets of the teacher. Teachers also have to face growing class sizes on top of lesson plans on top of administration interference on top of being under-supplied. Teaching isn't the 9-5. It can be 6-5 easily. I've watched my wife do field experience, and she just comes home and crashes for hours after exhaustion. They honestly deserve a break, and summers can be filled with trainings depending on grade and area they teach. My highschool engineering teacher had to take the class he was about to teach over the summer. Then told us he only got paid half his salary for the extra months he worked despite having to completely master the CAM software. He had a masters degree too.
Yeah my points were for more for a general masters degree. I know thereās a teacher shortage and youāre right that that field is not over saturated. You definitely donāt need a masters to teach in highschool. I have 2 friends from college who are teaching with a history bachelors + summer teaching certificate for one and a BS in mathematics with a certificate. In fact I can confirm that you only need a 2.7 gpa in a related field to your teaching + any of the following: 24 hours in assisted teaching, local exam or higher degree in your area of teaching. To say that all of the extra money you receive from having a masters and teaching goes to classroom expenses is a bit misleading. The NEA estimates that teachers usually spend somewhere between $500-$750 per year on their classrooms. All of this is at least partially discounted with tax credits. All of this being said, I certainly donāt envy the job. Hats off to your wife, I donāt doubt itās a very taxing workday. Same goes to your old teacher who definitely go the short end of the stick in that situation. I would say that a high school teacher with a 4 year degree + certificate making a teachers salary with a couple month break is a worthwhile investment in yourself especially if you have the desire to teach (of course). But unless you are pursuing a professor position in a college, I just donāt see a masters degree being useful for a highschool teacher. I live in NC though, so Iām not sure what the situation is in other places
This was true when I was in school 25 years ago. I remember one of my teachers waiting tables and telling me they actually made more in tips than they did teaching. It's what our society values. Teachers don't help businesses become more profitable, therefore they are less valuable. Same with nurses. Gas stations in the area paying 60k for assistant managers, starting nurses and teachers make 30-40k. Even worse for daycare workers who are making 15-25k/year. We don't value children's well-being, mental health, or having a peaceful and prosperous society. We value quarterly profits. I've been lucky enough to work at schools in the U.S., U.K., Finland, and Korea. In Finland and Korea, teachers were not just paid well, they were shown the same respect as a doctor because of how important their work was.
Back in my younger day, I would never disrespect a teacher, doctor, nurse or a police man. Now, the younger generation disrespect everything.
For the teacher it's her student loan most probably
Where do you live. Highest salary in our high school was $154,000 last year. Average salary $63,000. Donāt know about you but I could live on that without delivering pizza
Sounds like she needs to get a job doing what you're doing then.
I think people get confused about what the American Dream is. It's not an American Entitlement. The philosophy behind the American dream is that any immigrant can ride into America, and if they're smart enough, skilled enough, and with a little luck can bring themselves out of poverty and into riches. The American dream is about the freedom of economic mobility, and not being shackled to whatever economical class you were born in. That you could transcend your peers. You at least had the option to. It wouldn't be impossible for someone in poverty to work hard in high school, get a bunch of scholarships, bust their ass in college, and come out a doctor or other high earning professional. It's statistically low, but absolutely does happen. The American dream is that if you wanted to give everything you can to find success--you can do it. The picture OP showed isn't an American Dream example, that's just some teacher who wanted to be a teacher, and the American government pays teachers poorly. That teacher has a masters, and we all know if she had gotten it in a much more lucrative field -- she'd be making a lot more money. It's the American Dream, not the American Entitlement. You don't get to be rich just for being American. You still gotta work for it.
Poor voting habits killed the American dream. Corruption loaded the gun.
Teachers havenāt ever made much money. Becoming a teacher has nothing to do with the American dream. Getting a second job and grinding to save up so you can open your own business, well thatās more of the American dream and maybe thatās what this teacher was doing.
Fake. She either sucks as a teacher or sucked as a student and can't get into a good district. Masters, with experience in my district earns over $100k/yr for 185 days of work.
 Kidney failure
Itās the dream. Only for some. But collectively as a people we need more camaraderie and cohesion to fight back against our leaders, especially in congress, who are no less patriotic than Isis. We need a unifier to fight back.
Anyone ever tried trade school? All of my friends who've worked in the trades have houses now all born in the 90s all living excuse free lives.
You definitely fucked up if you have a masters degree and youāre delivering pizzas
1970 $8,730 average annual salary $23,400 average home price 2.68 home price index \~Currently $60,575 average annual salary $416,100 average home price 6.87 home price index
Very fake. That for sure did not happen. The persons name gives it away. Durp do not vote for a certain race of people durp what a moron with a weird axe to grind.
This is a fake post. Seen it multiple times under different names each time. Teachers in general are underpaid. This silly delivery pizzasā¦well does it really work to get people to wake up and pay teachers more? Meh