<p>Truck drivers are pretty well paid but you need a commercial driver’s license to get the position.</p>
<p>Postdocs are paid on the NIH scale [NOT-OD-09-075:</a> Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Stipend and Other Budgetary Levels Effective for Fiscal Year 2009](<a href=“http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-09-075.html]NOT-OD-09-075:”>NOT-OD-09-075: Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Stipend and Other Budgetary Levels Effective for Fiscal Year 2009) so after a few years postdocs easily outstrip their truck driving counterparts.</p>
<p>More to the point though, postdoc is a phase of training not an end career. We are paid on par to residents or fellows (clinical medicine counterparts).</p>
<p>4 years of Phd? I think you mean 5-6 years. And you can’t really judge salary based on training time, there isn’t some sort of universal linear relationship.</p>