The market can be a cruel master but it's still better than allowing government bureaucrats determine what everyone should make.

You mentioned the old Soviet Union. They were an interesting case. They arbitrarily set wages so it wasn't uncommon for coal miners and factory workers to make more than doctors. Now, why should someone go to all of the years of effort required to become a doctor is he/she isn't going to make a living? Of course, there was a joke in the old Soviet Union that went, "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."

I used to be a teacher back in the mid 1980s. I accepted the job knowing full well that it didn't pay well. When I no longer choose to tolerate the low pay, I went on to other things that had a better "BS to Benefit ratio."

Supply and demand has a lot to do with a job's salary. According to some reports, there are as many as 2 million teachers in America. It seems there are a lot of people who do that job, so there isn't a great demand to raise the wages to fill all of those positions. That may be changing over the next 10 years or so as large numbers of existing teachers retire. If school districts find they can't fill their positions at the existing salaries, then they'll have to revisit their pay scales in response to market forces.

It's easy to look at huge salaries paid to athletes and entertainers and complain how poorly essential people like teachers are paid. However, supply and demand rules there, too. A star athlete or actor can boost attendance so it can actually be profitable to pay those salaries if it means more ticket revenue. The studios and team owners are primarily concerned about one thing - butts in seats. Odds are no one would be willing to pay to see you or I act (or play ball).

My wife is a registered nurse. It took years of hard work for her to earn her nursing degree and license. It took many more years for her to work her way up the pay scale. Still, she only earns about 2/3rds the pay of a beginning dental hygienist in our area. The reason is simple - nurses are considered overhead while hygienists generate revenue.

Education can be useful in earning a living but having marketable skills is far more important. My brother Steve dropped out of high school years ago. Over the years, he became a master machinist and welder. One of his projects was building the liquid oxygen tanks on the X-33, the ones that worked. He earns more than I do as a software engineer with two masters degrees, but then, he's worth it. He was once hired for a job that listed a requirement for "a master's degree in engineering and 6 years of experience" because he had the skills to do the job even if he didn't have a diploma.

There was an interesting book published back in 1998 titled "The Millionaire Next Door" by Stanley and Danko. They interviewed millionaires all over America and came to some interesting views. The most likely millionaire in America is a small business owner who lives a low maintenance lifestyle. The book contrasts those with high maintenance lifestyles (like lawyers who have to project an "image" of success) with people like a mobile home dealer and found that the mobile home dealer was often far better off than the lawyer. If you can get a copy of the book, I think you'll find it enlightening. Very few of those people in the book inherited the money. Most worked their butts off to be a success, often after failing before on an earlier business attempt. "He who dares, wins."