So how much is garbage collection 'worth'? Remember that all work is worthy of proper renumeration, even jobs that you yourself would never think of doing. And lets not forget that it's hard work and prone to injury and working under conditions that you could hardly call ideal or attractive, and you seem to be saying that this means nothing. Perhaps not to you, but then you're not out picking up other people's crap and then trying to support a family on what you're getting paid for the work. Your logic is both flawed and naive, to say nothing of stupid and elitist.
BTW, I'm a college graduate and until I retired I made WELL over $100K/year. Granted, it took a few years before I reached that level of pay, but I suspect that in my nearly 50 years of engineering employment I was always making more than garbage collectors were.
OCU