It's Time to Raise Teacher Salaries Give me enough money and I'll do almost anything. For what? Because I can exchange money for goods and services, and I want goods and services. My willingness to “do things” for money can be explained by the basic economic principle of supply and demand: without much exception, an increase in demand for a good or service. increases the price of that good or service, and an increase in the supply of a good or service decreases the price of that good or service. In other words, with a big free market economy and a lot of money, you can accomplish almost anything. Therefore, if my “goods” or “services” are in sufficient demand (the price is high enough), then I will submit to the wonders of capitalism. Today, there is a widely held belief that primary and secondary education in the United States is not as exemplary as it can and should be (and certainly not as exemplary as, say, our military). There are, of course, myriad reasons why our basic education system should be exemplary, and all of them essentially boil down to the assumption that we need educated people to maintain (and increase!) America's prosperity . I suggest we use our current prosperity (money) and free market economy to strengthen our education system. We can acquire more competent teachers by increasing teacher salaries, thereby increasing the efficiency of educating our children and, therefore, prosperity. In terms of supply and demand, supply is measured by the size of the pool of available teaching jobs, and demand is measured by the number of people who want them. If there isn't enough teaching in the middle of an article...to "educate" anyway? In 1997 (according to the 1998 Digest of Education Statistics --http://nces.ed. gov/pubs99/1999036.pdf), students' combined SAT scores increased steadily from 856 to 1,116, positively correlated with parental education, from school dropout to higher education diploma. A similar correlation existed with family income: 873 for families earning less than $10,000, increasing to 1,130 for families earning more than $100,000. Maybe parenting matters more than teaching, or maybe more educated parents bought a "better" education with their higher salaries (through private school and/or living in wealthier school districts). Maybe both. Regardless, the principles of the free market are clear: more money gets better test scores, and higher test scores get more money. Investing in prosperity.