Progressives will talk about higher taxes and a bigger welfare state without actually pointing out the root cause, the rules as they are written — rules that needlessly protect high wages for professional services.

But these are not written rules. They are cultural norms. In the US, because we are culturally the land of innovation, the macro demand for brainpower is highly competitive. (Sadly, not enough of it is going into politics.) Our docs make so much because here many who have wherewithal to become docs could become something else that uses their endowments.

There is no direct competition between the brainy occupations, but there is definitely competition at the “What do you want to be when you grow up?” level. One can argue that brilliant teachers are no less important than brilliant doctors, but we don’t pay that way, and so we don’t recruit with that result. (I mean no disrespect to the brilliant and dedicated educators who choose that career; I’m just saying that our political economy dares them, rather than invites them, to be such.)

Opportunity costs drive economic choices. In the USA, the opportunity cost of being a doc is higher than in most other places, so the pay is higher. If we were to make a policy decision to increase the supply of docs, we would best be advised to de-risk the career choice by subsidizing medical school. We already “import” qualified students. As few as ten years ago, one could read the list of docs on a group directory and notice the abundance of Jewish names. Today, there as as many Wongs as Goldsteins, if not more. Immigrants are becoming docs. But they are doing it because it pays well. Otherwise, they would (again, as statistically significant populations, not as individuals) become software engineers. Cutting their pay will not end well for supply.

I agree fully with the argument that our capitalists are pitting our workers against the low-paid workers elsewhere. That should be illegal. “Free trade” does not mean buying from domestic sweatshops. Why should it justify buying from foreign ones to the detriment of our workers? International trade should proceed from some natural comparative advantage — more rain, sunshine, soil, etc., not from the an advantage in how crappy a life a country’s workers can be made to live. But you don’t have to be a socialist to eschew child labor abroad any more than you need be one to oppose child labor at home.

Finally, I think the conflation of conservatism with cupidity is unhelpful. The rich want to get richer because they are rich, not because they are “conservative.” Find a better word. Please.