Health insurance is not $50 a month. Wow did you really believe that? My health insurance is great, but is on par with other good insurance plans from other companies.

"Working 9 months/year with a seriously light load over the summer and a requirement to publish maybe once/year..."

My busiest two-month period of the entire year this year was spring term when I was supposedly "off". Just because faculty only teach 9 months out of the year does not mean they aren't working. Remember that only 50% of their contract is teaching, typically. The rest is research and advising. For me it was the advising---students typically are working on their dissertations during spring term and it about killed me.

I work year round, as does everybody.

"So even if a comparable PhD is making twice as much, they are probably also working twice as many hours (or close to it),"

Average faculty hours per week spent working is about 55. Are you saying other people are working 110 hours? Look up the data---when they survey/observe faculty, they are working about 55 hours a week.

"only have to publish 1 article per year"

Don't know where that is, but at BYU in my field, it's 2-3 articles a year. Even the full time profs near retirement are doing near that. My adviser was pumping out 5-6 articles a year just years away from retirement.