[p_j_w]

It seems pretty obvious that GP wasn’t saying $10/hr to mean literally $10/hr, but were exaggerating to imply that people were getting chump change for this work. $30/hr is still chump change and not enough to buy oneself any reasonable quality of life for the majority of the population.

[xienze]

Well, it's something. PhD students have always been pretty poorly paid because there's a massive oversupply of them. At least they have an additional source of income available to them.