High-skill scarcity inflates U.S. wages

An NBER paper shows U.S. physicians earn roughly two to four times what peers earn in Canada, the Netherlands, and Sweden, but their relative standing among high‑skill occupations is similar across countries. That pattern suggests the U.S. pays a broad premium to top talent because it lacks enough very high‑skill (high‑IQ) workers, pushing up wages across elite professions. — If true, this reframes debates about high professional pay (doctors, engineers, etc.) as a labor‑supply and immigration problem rather than a sectoral market‑failure unique to health care, so policy responses should focus on attracting and training high‑skill talent.