The actual reality is that your salary is not tied to your value, but to your negotiation skills (carried mostly by your leverage when you receive the offer)
This is what most people get wrong in this field. The only relationship between cost of labor and value is the upper bound. Which means no for-profit company would hire someone for less value than what they expect to get in return for that person.
But the actual cost of labor (your compensation) is dictated by market forces just like any other commodity. Why would anyone hire you at $100k/year if they have someone else, just as good as you, that they can hire at $50k/year?
Your ability to negotiate is tied to your leverage, which more often than not is competing offers (including your current job). That has absolutely nothing to do with value, other than the upper bound I mentioned above.
