[Jian-Yang]

>To catch up with what is common in Western Europe, the pay needs to at least double to 80k USD and more for teachers of upper secondary classes.

What do you mean by this? It seems that the USA pays very similar to what Western Europe pays their teachers (ignoring outliers)? https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salaries-by-country-...

[distances]

Direct comparison isn't very useful. Teacher salaries in Germany seem to be just above the US when just reading the chart, but in reality it's higher than e.g. most software developers make in Germany. Thus, gets you a lot further than in the US. You should rather compare teacher salaries to local engineer salaries, as the education is similar (assuming Master's is required).