The Washington Post provides strong evidence that a big part of the rising income disparity comes from rising executive salaries (Sunday June 19). The important number is that the top 0.1 percent earn 10% of personal income (so paying a substantial percentage of taxes is perfectly logical this is reached at about $1.7Million, 140,000 people). The top 1% earn 20% of the income. The largest group in this top tier is not entrepreneurs, but executives (in other words, employees, not creators or even capitalists, but overpaid employees). Athletes may be at this level, but there are only a few thousand pro athletes (these and other media/entrainment people are only 3% of the total). And some of them are company founders like Bill Gates.
The article also notes the difference in executive pay in the times when economic growth was much stronger (50′s and 60′s).
It is time for capitalists to assert their power and get some control over the inflated salaries of management — they are employees of the company and should be paid like other employees. It is executives who are complaining about the lack of qualified engineers, and even skilled labor, to hire, they are not complaining about the lack of managers.