Originally Posted by Std Deviation

You, me, and everyone else also pays for the education of physicians. The high cost of tuition doesn't come close to paying for medical school. Most of these doctors in training are affluent to begin with and will make 250K or more a year when ensconced in a career.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10265362

We subsidize doctors. So there's a lot more to complain about than Sally the art teacher. I taught school at an intercity school in Jacksonville, FL during a year leave of absence when Independence Air was going bust. My salary? 35K a year. Paid for my own classroom supplies. Home by 4? Nope, meeting with parents because it was "my fault" their child was not passing. Your examples are outliers. Granted, my sister in law teaches math in MI and makes 70K after 20 years. But take a look across the board at teacher benefits and wages. They are far closer to the poverty level than you suggest.

Summers off are unpaid in that a teacher can decide to forgo pay during those months and receive a higher weekly pay during the working months, or, a lower pay during the school year and a check during the summer months. It's not as glorious as it sounds. Many teachers work second jobs to pay their bills.

A masters degree in psychology netted me an extra $5K a year.