I think a lot of people get hung up on the idea that income is equivalent to dessert. Prices have nothing to do with who "deserves" what. They are merely a way

I think a lot of people get hung up on the idea that income is equivalent to dessert. Prices have nothing to do with who "deserves" what. They are merely a way to allow markets to clear supply and demand. This includes salaries, which after all are just the price of labor. Let's take the human element out of it. Do diamond "deserve" to be a million times more expensive than water? Water's essential for life, whereas diamonds are just decorations. Yet what would happen if we mandated that water must be priced higher than diamonds? It would wreak havoc. At the end of the day, markets are a social technology. The only one that humans have for effective large-scale coordination of economic activity. It would be great if there was a functional alternative system, but it simply doesn't exist. The enormous increases in material living standards that humanity has experienced over the past 200 years is only possible because we let markets determine supply and demand. (With a caveat for trained economists to design targeted interventions concerning well-studied and classified examples of market failures.) If you're concerned about inequality, the correct way to deal with it is with a robust welfare state and economist-designed redistribution schemes. Let markets decide price, and balance supply and demand. Then fix it on the backend with a welfare state. Don't mess with the machinery that literally feeds us.