Val, that's more or less what I was also getting at. It's just not always about the money for all people. The assumption here is that "smarter people all pursue the best possible financial compensation for their talents." As soon as that is untrue (and obviously it IS, or nobody would ever work in a STEM field in the public sector), then the correlation becomes flawed at the high end.
So the correlation can't possibly really be that simple at the tails of the distribution-- either of earning power or of IQ, I suspect. Mind-numbingly boring work doesn't pay as poorly as it probably should using this construct, because it SHOULD theoretically only draw persons who truly cannot do any other sort of tasks, and should pay accordingly. Also not exactly true-- most of those people doing "icky" or boring jobs do them because they pay well, not because they cannot do anything else.
I also agree wholeheartedly with the "choices" argument, as well. Our income could be about 180% of what it actually is, even accounting for gender inequity (DH and I both happen to have fairly well-compensated subspecialties within our discipline). Which makes our daughter's education about as expensive as the most obnoxiously over-priced private colleges anywhere on earth, more or less. {sigh}
LOL kcab, I think you're right. At least my parents were a GLORIOUS warning to others there. I haven't made any of the really obvious mistakes that I saw them make, anyway.
