The average person needs close to fifty dollars an hour to afford a home, healthcare, transportation, food, and a retirement unless they live in a depressed area. If you have children you will need more.
Of course almost no one gets paid this. That tells you all you need to know about our current system.
Not sure what “underpaid teacher” has to do with the free market. This is a position paid by tax money. And at least in Texas, that money is hoarded by the state instead of being added to the teacher’s salary because the state government is trying to kill off public education.
If it was “free market” you’d be paying out of pocket for private schooling.
The free market of politicians for sale has opted to buy only the politicians willing to pay teachers poverty-level wages for extremely difficult, emotionally exhausting job that has an impossible list of to-dos in an impossibly short amount of time.
Public school teachers experience EVERY single one of the worst elements of capitalism either directly or indirectly by only one or two degrees of separation. Never underestimate how shitty life is for teachers specifically because of capitalism