One of my former students, a few years ago, started a teaching gig in rural Iowa (where she was also expected to coach) for $24.5K. The critics like to point to senior teachers in large urban areas when they talk about teacher salaries, but the real story is right here.
If we keep electing people who say government is the problem to positions within said government, this is what we get: the evisceration of the public good so Chad and Karen have a low tax bill on their lake house.
Several times a day, I stop short and remember that there's a (rapidly-worsening) pandemic and my state and national government's strategy for preventing large-scale sickness and death is basically "wear a mask if you want, but we're not gonna really stop doing stuff."
Like, Iowa's Covid numbers are exponentially worse than they were in March, our hospitals are full, a couple dozen people die every day, and most folks around here are like "yeah, but I got tired of quarantine, so..."
I can understand wanting to pretend things are normal; I guess that's a natural response. But when you say "everything is OK; our numbers still look good," I feel like I should point out that those "numbers" are actual sick and dead people. Any number > 0 is...not good!!
Every suburban, mall-hopping non-mask-wearing, Applebee's-crowding Republican in central Iowa drives a $50K crew-cab pickup and none of them know how to park it. Meanwhile, actual farmers drive a 15-year-old F150 because they don't need to impress anyone in the Lowe's parking lot