Teachers shouldn't be paid like athletes. If there isn't financial incentive to be a teacher, it will ensure that only those who really WANT to teach end up teaching. However, they could use more money. What causes this? Free markets. Advertizers bring money to celebrities and atheletes which in turn sells their products. You can't make money with teachers and firefighters. So, it comes down to values. We value money over public service and education. Sad but true.

Yes.

yes

The vast majority of pro-athletes and wanna-be celebrities (assuming you mean actors, writers, aspiring film makers/directors/cinematographers, artists, dancers, fashion models, et al.) make squat. Most hold down 1 or 2 extra jobs just to live in tenement flats and road-houses and can barely afford to eat -- partly why they're all so thin! The competition to make it to the well paid big time is huge: only about 1 in 1,000 get far enough to make a respectable living. Once there, you can be knocked back down to the minors or to "has been" status at any time for almost any reason - either a career ending injury (not uncommon among athletes and dancers), because of a bad season in sports, or two box office flops in a row, or anything else you can name. You're constantly under pressure to produce (read: make pots of money for others) and if you don't, you're history. Of course there is no job security, and the union retirement, medical and disability packages aren't exactly great. Public school teachers, on the other hand, earn more per actual hours worked (when you include the value of their benefits and pension packages) than engineers, dentists, architects middle-managers, ministers, plumbers, vets, college professors, private school teachers and even doctors in the first 10 or so years of practice. Anyone can be a teacher: all it takes is a BA plus/including sitting through 2 years of their stupid teacher's indoctrination ... I mean certification program. And if you're willing to teach in a war zone (aka the inner city) you can do your teaching cert's while you teach. It's virtually impossible to get fired, especially once you have tenure/seniority except by mentioning God (at least in a positive or neutral way) or because you don't want your union dues to go to support Left-wing Democratic candidates. (When was the last time you heard of a public school teacher getting "released from his contract" because of sub-par test scores by his students in one year?) And teachers have a better medical, dental, disability, and pension plan than most senior executives. Metro-area Firemen and Policemen are also blessed with amazingly generous benefits packages that none but the very elite executives and members of the strongest most powerful unions (like the Teachers union) can ever hope to attain. Police also get to shoot, beat and taze people for "resisting arrest" when the "crime" that they were being arrested for is "resisting arrest", and can make a pretty penny in bribes and kickbacks. (Sorry: I lived for 13 years in Chicago, and for 5 years in Charleston SC before that, and now live in Thailand, so I may be a bit jaded on this one.) And firemen get to be real heroes on a regular basis, and can ride on fire trucks at top speed through city streets with the sirens going once a shift or more, just as part of their job -- i.e., there's compensation of different and arguably superior kind, especially if you're a man with still enough of the best part of a boy in you. Social workers are another matter, but when I try to help the unemployed, it's by giving them real help, real skills, and a real job doing really productive work, and not by giving them a degree in "social work" and a "job" at being a busy-body at taxpayer expense. As for soldiers, remember that this Republic was founded on ideas and principles that feared and rejected a professional standing army as imperialist and an engine of despotism. (Can't think why.) Of course the way the Founders saw it, every able bodied man was (of course) in the militia of his community, and every community had a militia, which could be called up in times of national emergency to defend the country. As such, military service was a tax, not a profession. The beginnings of America's massive paid standing army was the beginning of American interventionism and imperialism around the world, an activity which does not serve and protect the people as a whole, but the interests of a few extremely wealthy and powerful internationalists, while impoverishing and endangering the rest of us.

When you state "we" pay, you may be right when it comes to public school teachers, police, etc., and they get paid what the local or state tax structure can afford, while athletes and movie stars are paid from a private industry, so whatever the market value of their work is to that private industry, that is what they will get paid. It would disturb me quite a bit more if my tax dollars where raised to pay the local pro sports team's new point guard salary, but it is not the case.

It's called supply and demand. I find it disturbing since level-of-pay reflects how much our society values teachers, social workers, firemen, polite officers and soldiers etc.

Many an athlete can teach me my abc's but show me a teacher who can throw a 90mph fastball ;)

It does seems ridiculous to me that the people we trust with educating and saving lives are paid so little in comparison to one who can throw, catch or hit a ball.

Super good question and I agree with you 100 percent + 5

Yes, things are definately screwed-up.

I really think cleaners and unskilled factory workers should be paid more. They are my heroes.

yes this is something i find quite disgusting about capitalist society.

We obviously value entertainment more than education. Remember, it is the customer that drives the pay not some unseen corporation or government.

It is an embarrasment!

What do you mean, "we" pay athletes and celebrities? I don't pay them a damn thing, and I doubt that you do either. If someone else wants to pay them millions upon millions of dollars, that's their problem.