MikeHotel, I think you and I are in agreement that the salary figures posted for other professions were inaccurate and that most in those professions earn nowhere near what was stated.
I do disagree with the concept of comparing the trials and tribulations of getting from PPL to an Airliner,with the trials and tribulations of gaining a qualification as an accountant or a lawyer. They are such different trials and tribulations that I don't think they can be compared, the old apples and oranges that you speak of.
For example, I could have quite happily lived in my home city and taken a $40k student loan, picked up a bit more work in the bottle store ( where 90% I studied in peace), continued my social life and gained my qualifications as an accountant twenty years ago. That would have been much easier than the road I chose with much heavier debt, much lower prospect of paid work at the end, 14 different living locations in five years, little social activity in remote locations, several life and death decisions to be made along the way and a whopping salary of £10k per annum as a reward for the first five years of slog when I finally joined a well known Airline.
Now, I'm sure there are examples of much easier runs and I'm sure there are horror stories of people trying to make it in other industries, but what I'm saying is that they are different types of stress and challenge and cannot be widely/ wildly compared.
Even if you could compare them it is pointless because people make their own beds which eventually, they have to lie in. To rail against that is tan attempt to avoid personal responsibility.