Men's Group

Just like the game of life, early on you're asked to make a choice: career "a" or career "b". It's not up to some elevated authority to decide what to pay people.

If the supply of people willing to suck stink is too small to meet the demand for stink suckers the wage goes up. If the supply of people who disliked the idea of sucking stink so much that they bought the training and certification required to get the other job is too high then the wage for perfume sucking goes down.

There's nothing that says that a plumber is "worth less" than a teacher. The people with plugged toilets decide how much (s)he's worth.

Different jobs requiring similar training and certification can carry radically different nonmonetary benefit. In fact, credential creep in desirable careers is driven mostly by a need in the small pool of employers to weed out the applicants. Education, as practiced in the US is actually more like a bidding war. The one willing to invest the most money in the english literature PhD will get the $28,000 a year copy editor job.