SE:V, I'll be honest

[Barnacle Bill]

AngleWyrm said:
Or the guy needing a lawn mowed.

And here I wonder if the original reason is simply that there are a lot of lawns to mow, so a fella could make a living at it. But bypass surgery is a skill needed only rarely, thus we make up for it by paying him a full wage for a few hours' work.

Then of course greed set in.

I wouldn't call it greed. It is a matter of (1) the investment in training time and expense to produce a cardiovascular surgeon is a whole lot higher than that to produce a lawnmower-pusher and (2) the percentage of the population that is mentally capable of getting through the training to successfully perform open heart surgery is a lot lower than the percentage of the population mentally capable of mowing a lawn. Why would anybody go through all those years of medical school, residency, etc... and pay all those big tuition bills if at the end he got paid the just same as a non-skilled laborer?

The value of anything (including an hour of your labor) is exactly what somebody else will pay you for it, and not a penny more or less, and if the market price isn't high enough to justify the investment then suppliers exit the market (which in fact is happening in the US medical industry as malpractice insurance rates continue to rise and insurance reembursement continues to fall).