I recently had a crazy (is it?) thought: what if hourly wages were the same for all jobs. Every human working one hour would be paid the same. The dishwasher in the restaurant would be paid the same as I would for writing software (they would earn more, I would probably earn less).
I like money, but I would like every person giving an hour of their life to be compensated enough to get by measurably above poverty.
People do all kinds of things we might think is nuts, for reasons often unknown to anyone. But true, some jobs are so crazy that nobody in their right mind would do them. But hey, there still may be people in a different mind who would.
Paul Graham once explained the power of prestige - http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html . I daresay some people would do hard or dangerous jobs primarily because of the prestige of being known to do them.
And as for "dirty jobs", equal wages doesn't mean that everyone has a choice in which jobs they are capable of doing (or which jobs are locally accessible).
I like money, but I would like every person giving an hour of their life to be compensated enough to get by measurably above poverty.