High Pay Not Only For Teachers - Think Correlation

Our teachers are overpaid, even though the population still respects the teaching professional. Then, how about the civil servants, and of course the ministers’ pay will come into picture again.

Local mainstream media reported it last week and so do the Guardian:

Teacher salaries are at their highest in Singapore, with an average of $45,755. South Korea, USA, Germany and Japan are all above $40,000. The UK is at $33,377.http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/oct/03/teachers-rated-worldwide-global-survey

Will you be surprised if you link this high pay for teachers to the even higher pay of our ministers and civil servants?

How many times our ministers' pay is higher  than other countries? thehearttruths.com

So, there is a correlation.  High pay from the top will also result to high pay for the bottom.  If you reward a minister with 4 or 5 times higher salary than their counterparts in advanced countries, you should also increase the lower ranking officers' pay to justify your action.

Hence, we see a situation that teachers and civil servants have moderate increase of salary. This moderate increase made them one of the highest paid teachers in the world.

Since teachers and civil servants are paid higher compared to the world average, then how should we reward ministers and senior civil servants? As there is already a support base from the bottom, it is very easy to justify for the top. Being considered as talents, big pay increase should be given to ministers and senior civil servants.

So, now you know why our Prime Minister is the highest pay political leader in the world even President Obama is envy about it.   

The survey of teachers’ pay and respect is conducted by the Varkey GEMS Foundation. In the same survey, even Singaporeans also think there should be a cut in teachers’ pay: 

[However, while Singaporeans thought highly of teachers in most regards, respondents believed that the fair wage for a teacher should be 14 per cent less than the average actual wage of US$37,144 (S$46,400).]
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/teachers-in-singapore/835670.html

If teachers should be paid 14% less, then should there a cut in pay for ministers and senior civil servants? Teachers enjoyed small increase and ministers enjoyed big increase in the past.  Now if there is a small cut in teachers’ pay, there should a corresponding big cut for ministers and civil servants.

Is this possible?  The answer is quite obvious.  This is PAP government. They have yet to listen to the people. In fact, indirectly, the survey also points to a demand for a further cut in ministers’ pay through the 14% decrease for teachers’ pay.

Survey always tells many different stories and their correlations.  With selective reporting, you only see one side of the story.