But in the US, most teachers are employed in publicly funded positions, and most computer programmers, not.

Teachers in the US know that they are not going to get rich, and so those who are primarily driven by income opportunities do not enter the profession. And of course, some would be cheap at four times the salary and others would be worth giving a raise to get them out of teaching.

But the "demand" is not an amorphous mass of consumers with the marginal consumer wanting education provided hiring the marginal individual willing to do so at the wage just sufficient to get them to work - it is an organized process of determining qualifications and requirements and recruiting students into education degree programs and then placing them in school and then a highly politicized process of bargaining between the teachers and the school and the funding government(s).

Indeed, the "customers" in K-12 education are required by law to be there and are not charged (except of course in the US for a whole host of side fees and charges because of highly politically organized refusal to provide effective public education across the board).

Its as far from a market mechanism as the pay for CEO's, the difference is the institutions o depress teacher's pay and the institutions to inflate executive pay.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

In my country, the average computer programmer makes less than the top teaching position. It makes around half of it.

Intra class inequality makes inter class comparisons hard.