Note, research and scientific staff is equally underpaid, if not more, in the US. Since fundamental physics and bioinformatics have been mentioned several time

Note, research and scientific staff is equally underpaid, if not more, in the US. Since fundamental physics and bioinformatics have been mentioned several times in this thread, if you're curious, look into salaries at places like the National Laboratories, or even independent labs like the Allen Institute. The market distortion in the field of AI/ML isn't as simple as poor wages in academic research. There are many strong European industries that could benefit from more AI/ML and that can definitely afford attractive salaries. Those jobs already exist around the German car makers for instance. Unfortunately, there's always more money to be made selling ads.