I see the personal jibes are starting already...
To the OP- I think you need to have a serous think about doing a PhD if you think "a PhD is the equivalent as working in the industry" . That is a seriously flawed opinion and the wrong attitude.
Saying that sometimes the inverse can eb true, I finished my Phd and I am now working industry, I still do research almost all day, read articles, I hope to publish results (after the patents are written), we have weekly meetings discussing research, and my work environment is actually far more relaxed than when I did my PhD (my PhD had 9-6 face time, I only a have a 11-4 face time now!). The difference is I work 40-50 hours a week compared to 60-70, I never work weekends, I earn a decent salary, and a load of company perks (bi-weekly massages, bonuses, stock options, etc.) and don't have to deal with students unless I want to (I am supervising some master students at the local state university).
With regards to pay, in the UK you will find it pretty much fixed, sometimes you can have a higher annual stipend but that includes required teaching hours, other places will be lower but teaching is paid on top.
In the rest of the world there are much larger variances in stipends between universities, and even within labs the same university. Where I did my PhD (EPFL, Switzerland) there were basically 2 levels of pay, 75% and 100%. The idea being that most people get paid at the 75% level and those that hold additional responsibilities (Sys Admin, additional teaching load beyond the requisite, if the prof has some personal project they want you to work on outside of your PhD) then you would get 100%. However, profs were free to select a 75% or 100% as they wish, some labs would just give everyone 100%, others would give everyone 75% regardless of additional work. The 100% pay scale was supposedly equivalent to industry standard for having BSc/MSc.
At current exchange rates I was paid over £40,000 at the 75% level
A word of warning though, it is clear form previous discussions on OCUK that many people doing a PhD in the UK appear to have a far easier time with far less additional responsibilities and a subsequent reduction in work hours per week. Personally, reflecting back on my PhD I actually highly value the additional extraneous work, at this moment on screen I have a patent application I'm writing (helped on several in my PhD), next week I am meeting with some venture capitalists to help my CEO talk them into giving us $10million (I helped write several multimillion euro project proposals during my PhD, and helped explain to EU bureaucrats why the millions they spent on our project was well invested).
It's not so much of a competition. Just further nuances to debunk this whole 'science research is worth every penny and money for poetry and philosophy is for hippies' nonsense.
