I did cleaning for a while. Of all the jobs I have been employed to do, cleaning was the worst. Easy work, except for the way the cleaners are treated, often by some of the most obnoxious office workers.

There was the juvenile who would walk around the office throwing out paper clips all over the floor for the cleaners to find and clean up.

Another group of juveniles would have their lunch each day at the conference table, which was situated on carpet, and then sweep their crumbs from the table directly onto the carpet.

The pay is so low that cleaning work is actually highly stressful. There is constant worry about getting enough money to pay even the most basic bills, and I often lived on one meal a day, which was baked beans mixed with rice.

Quite often the cleaners had to empty rubbish bins and thrown out food such as half-eaten lunches, when we hadn’t had anything to eat at all that day.

I can understand if someone is on a high wage if they are working long hours, but I have minimal regard for people who are wasteful, or spend so much of their money on status symbols.

I also have minimal regard for people who feed off the taxpayer, while having total contempt for the taxpayer, and the number one people who appear to be this way right now would be teachers and academics.

"and the number one people who appear to be this way right now would be teachers and academics"..you forgot artists and australia's entire farming sector

E. Sykes
I haven’t had that much to do with artists, but I do know that some of them do it quite tough.

I have had something to do with farmers, and many do it tough, but many are also quite innovative, and Australia is now heavily dependant on primary producers.

I have had something to do with teachers, and they whinge much more than farmers, while lieing to the public that they have an “excellent” education system, while showing almost no innovation, while constantly having their hand out for more and more taxpayer funding.

I did meet quite a few people from different backgrounds while cleaning, but I have never heard of an ex-teacher doing cleaning (too much cleaning involved I would think).

"also have minimal regard for people who feed off the taxpayer, while having total contempt for the taxpayer, and the number one people who appear to be this way right now would be teachers and academics."

But you're fine with lawyers, real estate agents, investment bankers etc?

Actually, school teachers are part of that small minority in Oz who make -or exceed- the 'average' wage.
They are also, not coincidentally, in the minority of occupations which has retained a strong union, and the willingness (not to mention economic ability) to go on strike.
Sadly, most of them seem quite happy to be on that side of the Gap, and show little inclination to drag the rest up with them.
Where's the fun in being rich, if nobody's poor?

From my book Enterprise and Venture Capital 5th Edition Allen & Unwin June 2009:

"...why (are) institutional equity fund managers paid 10-20 times the salaries of public sector teachers?
• First, there are many teachers to one buyer-the Department of Education. By contrast there are around 100 buyers of fund managers in Australia but the pool of managers is limited.
• There is no measure of how good a teacher is except by hearsay. By contrast there are at least three actuarial firms measuring the performance of fund managers. The buyers know who are the best performers and exactly what they have achieved in the past.
• Standardisation of the curriculum means the switching costs between teachers is low and the buyer is indifferent to the quality.

On the other hand good fund managers can and generally do take their clients with them so, to the employing institution, the switching costs, in terms of lost revenue, can be very high.

All these factors explain why fund managers are highly paid while teachers are poorly paid. What is interesting is that the teacher's union is ensuring that status quo remains."

Although even more interesting now is that Julia Gillard is trying to implement some form of performance monitoring over the protests of the teachers' unions