It's really hard to get rich in the world by following an easy path. All things considered (prerequisite education, initial debt, work hours, desirability of everyday work), the average cog-like computer programmer is somewhere close to the top.
If you want to make money, stop whining and go make it. Negotiate a better salary with your company. Find someone with a problem and solve it. Realize an inefficiency in the world and fix it. The people who make money and love life don't do it by lobbying.
Here's a secret: you don't have to have any education to make good money. My stepmother started breeding German Shepherds when I was a child. She now sells them for $2000+ each, for family pets (http://minternsgermanshepherds.com if you're interested). She didn't even finish high school. She now pays a couple teenagers to help with the laborious task of caring for dozens of dogs.
My brother turned down a pharmacy scholarship to join the Marines. By the time he finished his five year tour-of-duty, he had established himself in the field of performance diesel trucks. He's helping people make 7,200-pound trucks do 10-second quarter miles (think Fast and the Furious). He runs his own garage (http://dieseladdiction.com if you're interested). He gets there at 6 AM and doesn't leave until 5 PM or later. He's booking people a month out because his schedule is so full, and he just keeps raising his rates. He now has two guys working for him and will be looking to hire another soon.
By and large, the people who make lots of money do it by working really hard. They develop their expertise to a point where there are perhaps one or two competitors even close to their level. The product they provide is something that people want and are willing to pay money for. They grow their business beyond themselves and enable others to make a living, too.
I don't want to work that hard. I'm happy to be able to use my expertise to improve my stepmom's or my brother's business operations. I can build them websites, automate some of their clerical tasks, and otherwise support what they do. But I don't lose sight of the fact that they are the ones creating the value in the first place. They put in the hard work to make the lives of thousands of people better in some small way, and I just grease the gears.
People want great pets. People want fast trucks. People don't want computer programs, they want better lives. When programmers actually align themselves with something people want, they do just fine.
If we want to be able to clock in at 10 or 11 and leave by 6 or 7, to enjoy what we do, to avoid taking full ownership of the product, to be generally stress-free, to not take some fucking initiative, then no, sorry to tell you, we're not going to do better than a well-above-average salary. You don't get rich by being lazy.