u/binjamin222

People wouldn't invest all that time and money into becoming a doctor if it didn't pay off in the end.

If the investment didn't pay off because cashiers and doctors got paid the same then people just would not become doctors.

But what if there is no investment.

What if training to be a doctor is a job that you get paid for?

What if training to become anything is a job that you get paid for?

Would people still not pursue highly skilled jobs, even if the pay was the same as low skilled jobs, but the pay applied to both the years and years spent learning the skills as well as practicing in the end?

I think I'm misusing the word economic value in relation to the dictionary definition, but what do you think...

The quantity of money does not matter it's purchasing power that does. You increase purchasing power through competition, that's the only really way you do it. You have to push the price closer and closer to the cost of production (economic value) the amount of life force your willing to give up to produce the good. Uninhibited competition, innovation, automation is how you reduce the cost (economic value) of goods by reducing the finite life force required to reproduce it, which at the root is how all goods are reproduced. You have to remove the things that stifle competition: ip, land rights, corporate personhood, limited liability, zoning laws, regulatory capture etc. Things that enable monopoly rents, jacked up prices relative to the cost of production (economic value). You must get rid of monopoly rent the antithesis to competition and a drag on production. They are legal fictions. They only exist because the state says they do. If anything, their value is entirely created by the state and their monopoly on force.