> If you take the same skills and do things with them that others care less about, you'll be paid less.

The point is that if even if you do exactly the same thing and are a post doctoral researcher in an industrial lab; you will earn more than what you would do with the same execution in academics.

If you're really doing the exact same thing, then why not just move to an industrial lab -- problem solved? Presumably there's a reason some people want to stay in academia, which seems to imply they're doing something different there?

Sure. That's exactly how it works, and I don't see any problem with that.

My point was that postdoc salaries don't vary much by field.