Software developers make $100+ an hour. The jobs are there for people willing to adapt to them. You can't just wait to be handed a job that matches your current abilities.
I doubt there is ANY employer demand for high-paid programmers.
The demand from an employer perspective is for highly-skilled programmers. If a proven highly-skilled programmer was willing to happily work for minimum wage employers would be lining up for miles to hire that person.
The highly-skilled workers are the ones demanding to be highly-paid.
If flipping burgers was more difficult then there would be a smaller supply of qualified workers, those workers could demand to be paid more, and the employers would have to pay up or risk getting crushed by their competition.