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ManusJustus said:
HappySqurriel said:

It would be impossible to attract people who could do these same jobs without offering them a similar or greater salary.

Then why are there doctors in France, Britain, and Sweden?  If you look at America, many of our professions pay much more than similar developed countries. 

Yeah, if you forced a pay cut on doctors they would go into some other high paying proffesion, so you would have to do a major overall and bring down many of overpaid salaries down at once.  Thats not possible under current conditions, but it doesnt mean it doesnt need to be done.

As for a doctor's education, the average doctor can expect to make $200,000 a year (keep in mind that family doctors make much less than specialists, and thus are pulling the average down).  As for your calculations, the only thing that makes becoming a doctor look less appealing is the cost of education, which is obviously high since many of their deans and teachers are making a ton of money (At my university, the president makes $800,000 a year and the dean of medicine makes over $500,000, not to mention numerous other deans and professors as well as a neurosurgeon doctor who make over a million a year).  As long as these people have these salaries education is going to be coslty, so all doctors will need to make a lot of money to pay them off, and thus charge patients a lot of money.

So, in your ideal world where there isn’t a major difference in income between those that work hard to achieve great things and those who make excuses to stay where they’re at, why would an individual spend decades more in school, work long hours, and take on the responsibility of these high paying jobs when they can have a similar material standard of living while working a 20 hour work week at a low stress job?