[jazzyk]

"paying such high wages"

High wages? Not compared to doctors or lawyers or mid-level business folks. My friend is a marketing manager (a glorified secretary/copy writer with an MBA, by her own admission) and she makes more or less as much as a senior developer.

Enough already with the "high wages" myth. It is the exact cause for the shortage of software engineers in the US - most young people in the US don't want to pursue it because the reward is not commensurate with the effort and risk.