Doctors and lawyers could afford a house in Malibu and they are wage workers.

The white collar professionals who can afford these types of areas are usually much more like entrepreneurs than individual practitioners of their craft.

And they have a relevant education.

If by afford you mean "take out a loan that will not be paid off until the property is underwater from global warming", sure.

There is no job that's kept pace with the growth of the economy, let alone the growth of the stock market.

At this point the smartest economic decision anyone can make is to invent cryosleep, build a modest nuclear reactor in their basement and wait for the year 3000 where compound interest would have made them the richest person in the world.

Not all doctors. Not all lawyers. Only the cream of the crop in those respective fields, and only after 20+ years in the field.

Of course, that assumes a normal mortgage, with no “payments go to interest only” or other malarkey.

But to be able to play at the top of the field you'll have to have attended something like Penn Law or Yale Medicine. SUNY Downstate won't cut it.

It's somewhat backwards in medicine. Many top grads stay in academics where the prestige is high but the pay is low. With the exception of elective plastics and dermatology, the highest earning physicians tend to be from middle of the road schools and work in rural areas after graduation (commonly from surgical sub-specialties).

It will, it’s just substantially harder. The ranks of partners at top law firms are much less prestigious than those of top law faculty. Academia cares more about prestige than basically any other sector of the economy. Even in medicine you have many, many tries at associating yourself with a high prestige institution throughout your career. If you studied at a toilet tier Caribbean medical school but ten years later you’re working at the Mayo Clinic no one will care about where you got your degree.