Yup... Somehow, being able to suffer financially is somehow a sign of your academic commitment. Post-docs are rare enough and most professors dont even get tenure anymore. The result is an insular community of hyper-competitive credit-chasing asshats looking to put their name on your work because you needed their signature for something once.
A friend of mine chased a PhD instead of looking towards industry for jobs. He kinda found out roughly how much a few of us were paid compared to him with a lot less years in education and he was NOT happy. He spent the rest of the night trying to belittle people until people called him out on his bullshit.