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     Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 11451 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
How Rich is Your Superintendent? At Global Rich List, you can find your annual-income world ranking out of 6 billion inhabitants. I decided to see just how good Scotia-Glenville's $125,000 superintendent's salary is. (NY superintendent salaries are here).  For the 2009-10 year, S-G's super's salary is $148,500, putting her in the top 0.34% richest people in the world. Only 20,783,236 out of 6.8 billion people earn a higher salary. It turns out that Superintendent Swartz is in the top 0.45% richest people in the world! She's the 27,032,565 richest person on earth, with 5,972,967,435 people earning lower annual incomes. Pretty amazing, eh? (For reference, the U.S. has a population nearing 300 million). Nearby Niskayuna's superintendent earns about $150,000 a year. That makes him the 18,057,565 richest person on earth! The North Salem superintendent makes about $200,000 a year. S/he's in the top 500,000 based on annual income. Who says you can't get rich in public education? Half the world has an annual income of $870 or less. In A Hard Lesson in Hunger, I've pointed out that America does more to improve impoverished conditions throughout the world than any country. Yet, we could do much more. Think about this for a minute: If Americans spent more to assist the world's needy, our homes wouldn't cost a quarter million to a million dollars. Lot's of other goods and services would be cheaper, too. Why? Prices are a function of the availability of money. The more money available, the higher price people can afford to bid or pay. It's how we get homes with mountain views worth $1 million. These views aren't worth that amount of money in the grand scheme of human needs and wants. People pay that amount because they have the money. But if they had less money by sending more of it to help the world's needy, then, on average, they couldn't afford to drive up the value of "views" as high as they are. And, of course, since most people keep most of their money, it forces everyone to keep most of their money so they can afford to pay the higher prices caused by the high availability of money. Implicitly, as a nation, we make moral choices with how we spend our money. In America, it's more important to pay lots of money for "views" and high salaries for public officials than it is to help the destitute build better lives. That's the calculus of our morality. 
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