Personally I think that they deserve every penny because they have certainly changed my life. I spent twenty or more years washing and corking up cadavas for a money-grabbing funeral parlour in North Devon(did my back in lugging them around) until I was invited to China to teach English for a training centre. It's nearly one year on now and I am as happy as larry. Which would you prefer, one lifeless corpse after another or lively and appreciative Chinese students?

Not everyone was in the former profession you were in. I am absolutely sure there are many happy people doing their respective jobs in the west. I do not think you have seen the thousands upon thousands of Chinese students looking for work lining up for applications in the funeral and crematory professions in China yourself, and I am also sure that many of them would snicker at the fact that you were not making too much money back home doing this while in China this just happens to be one of the shadiest industries in terms of making (really stealing in most cases) money from families that just lost their loved ones. Just as low as the ESL private "education" industry.