What we value

I’ve been re-reading Paul Graham’s Hackers & Painters. This morning I’m reading the essay Mind the Gap and he says (pg. 118):

A 747 pilot doesn’t make 40 times as much as a checkout clerk because he is a warlord who somehow holds her in thrall. His skills are simply much more valuable.

In general, I agree with PG: the skills and training a 747 pilot has does make him more “valuable”. But I think there’s a gaping hole here for which he doesn’t account. What about teachers? I would argue that (good) teachers create the greatest kind of wealth we could ever have. They educate and train society’s future wealth creators. And yet how valuable to we, as a society, consider them to be? No more valuable than your generic office worker. It is one of my most strongly held beliefs that if we value our future, teachers should be paid more like 747 pilots and less like checkout clerks.