A truly biblical way to make a living...

The two or three thousand dollars ... I am paid for commissions recompenses my work at the rate of about twenty-five cents an hour.
Elliott Carter, "The Orchestral Composer's Point of View", The Orchestral Composer's Point of View: Essays on Twentieth-Century Music by Those Who Wrote It, R.S. Hines, ed., University of Oklahoma Press, 1970.

The minimum wage in the U.S.A. as of February 1970: $1.45 an hour.
source: Minimum Wage and Maximum Hours Standards Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1988 Report to the Congress under Section 4(d)(1) of the FLSA.

... to be esteemed is better than silver or gold. 
The Book of Proverbs 22:1