What scientists do is of less immediate use to society than what all of those other professionals do.

I’m an astronomer. My use to society is in helping to express and pursue the human race’s collective driving curiosity about the Universe around us. I also support the ongoing enterprise of exploration, which as a side effect will hopefully help inspire kids to go into technical fields, some of which will be directly useful.

It’s no surprise to me that people who’ve spent as much (or even less) time in school than I did make a lot more money than I do. The truth is, compared to a lot of society, I’m pretty well paid. I’m getting to do what I like, and I can live comfortably. I can’t really complain about it, even though a simple “cost/benefit” analysis comparing my pay to the number of years I spent in school might suggest I mis-spent my school years. Simple money analyses like that don’t motivate most scientists working in the area of basic research.

Lawyers keep those with the money out of jail.

Doctors keep those with the money alive.

Financial analysts help those with the money shift more money away from those with less money, and into their larger gold coin filled vaults (or secret Caymen Island holding company accounts).

Scientist just do everything else… The only problem is that you rarely come face to face with the scientist and realize how valuable they are (not to imply that “financial analysts” are valuable to our actual society at all).

They got paid for the creation of the wealth. But they did still donate it.

However, they didn’t hold on to the wealth and attempt to keep milking it. One could draw a comparison to copyrights. A moderate copyright term allows an artist to be compensated for creating cultural wealth. An extreme or perpetual copyright term allows the artist and his descendants to continue to monopolize and earn money from that wealth.

Science, effective, has a zero copyright term. Yeah, some sicentists end up patenting what they’re doing, but even patents don’t last as long as copyrights do. Copyrights last too long right now, and it seems that it’s only getting worse.

They “earn” prestige, acclaim, respect, for making great discoveries. Also they get to spend their life searching for those discoveries (to be able to do the thing you really want to do all the time is about as wealthy as you can get).

So the statement “Scientists, till recently at least, effectively donated the wealth they created” doesn’t really hold up.

They got a lot of wealth in return for the wealth they created - enough to persuade them to continue, anyway. It just wasn’t all payment in the form of money.

There seems to be a general temptation to analyse the world exclusively in terms of a zero-sum conflict between the haves and the have-nots, in which the only kind of economic relationship is one-way exploitation. We have Marx and others to thank for this popular but misguided misconception.

PK said: “KB, it’s because we collectively let “them” get away with paying us badly. We put up with this because we love what we do. I for one still think I have the best possible job…”

Saying “let them get away…” implies that a theft is being committed.

But isn’t the truth that you are smart enough to be more interested in having a wealth of time to spend doing what you love, instead of a pile of money? I don’t think anyone’s screwing you over! You sound extremely successful measured against what is important to you.