What you are describing is a perfect storm of two economic fallacies -- the theory of marginal productivity and regressive taxation. The former describes how in

What you are describing is a perfect storm of two economic fallacies -- the theory of marginal productivity and regressive taxation. The former describes how increasing pay will correspondingly increase productivity and the latter describes gradually decreasing tax rates as the amount being taxed increases. Executive productivity is notoriously difficult to quantitatively measure and it is generally determined by compensation committees, whom are staffed by executives themselves and/or those with a vested interest in voting to raise executive pay. Such incestuous planning structures are almost always subject to graft and corruption. Regressive taxation (including generous deductions hidden to those unable to afford the best tax planners) may be touted as necessary to reduce capital flight but the naked and bald-faced wealth inequality is simply unconscionable. Relatedly, Trump's tax plan is most definitely a bone throw to the rich as it includes repealing the estate tax. Democracy and progressive taxation have gone hand-in-hand since the end of WWII and it must go hand-in-hand in the twenty-first century.