In the heartland state where I live, there is a Republican state senator or representative who complain about professors who make $120,000 and teach one class and then hold office hours. Well, that elected official has no clue. many of us work all the time. the salaries in the Geology dept here are more like half that for less senior professors; only the chair of the dept makes more than 100 k. You make little during your lengthy education. Research professors not only teach, but are expected to carry out research at a high level (at Universities probably all professors are expected to do research). The supervise graduate students. Some of these students are great and some are um...not so much.

For me, I figure my lifetime earnings would be more if I had stuck with my career in the Woolworths stockroom (I guess I would be sporting good assistant manager at Target by now).

I'm up at 3 AM to see if data processing completed OK: this is subsurface imaging. I don't work as hard as research professors because I don't teach, but I do work with students.

Roger covered the rest of it.
Chris