But that's between Musk and whoever is paying him? I'm not sure why anyone but these parties should get in the middle of this (other than taxing his income etc.

But that's between Musk and whoever is paying him? I'm not sure why anyone but these parties should get in the middle of this (other than taxing his income etc.). In terms of the social impact of Musk being paid $54b it really depends on what happens with that money. It's not a negative for society if it gets invested in something that adds value. If Musk stores it in his mattress then it has around zero impact. If Musk competes with other people in society for limited resources using that money then it can have a negative impact. I don't think the real problem is Musk's pay. It's just a lightning rod. The problem is too many people with scarce resources. Paying Musk less doesn't solve that. The middle class is eroding not only because of pay disparity, it's because the life style of the middle class isn't sustainable when you have x100 the people wanting to have that life style. Now it's not exactly a zero sum game, we do have productivity gains and figure out other ways to get more out of finite resources, but it's also clearly not possible for everyone in China (e.g.) to have an acre of land, a nice house, and drive a Tesla (or whatever the middle/upper class dream is for the Chinese). So the question is should nobody have it or should more successful (or lucky or privileged) people have more and how much control you want to exert on these processes. Eliminating the top 0.1% via taxation doesn't have a certain outcome, it could make things worse for everyone, it could have no difference on the 99.9%, or it could move them ever so slightly higher. I doubt it has a huge positive impact. Then I guess you're going to end up with some remaining, maybe what you consider unfair, distribution. Part of the economic process that's been going on is also the shift of resources/wealth from a smaller part of humanity to a larger part (again China and other countries going from zero to some substantial portion). I don't think it's as simple as it seems.