"I explicitly say that variation in productivity is only one source of variation in income [...] where does that income come from? Who made the wealth it repres

"I explicitly say that variation in productivity is only one source of variation in income [...] where does that income come from? Who made the wealth it represents?" This shows the same problem -- productivity (effort) of the individual is not identical with wealth creation (earnings) and hence the two have different consequences for the individual's compensation and its justification. A person (your CEO) who is a 100x more productive (which I do have difficulty conceiving) does not necessarily generate 100x more wealth. Jobs was replaced by Tim Cook, and Apple continues to create astonishing amounts of wealth. Is that because Cook is actually as productive as Jobs? Was Jobs in fact replaceable? No, it's actually that the wealth created by Apple was attributable to Apple. Yes, it took a particular person to start Apple and forge it into a wealth-creating machine, but that forms a different kind of compensation argument. Sever that link between an individual's productivity/effort and the earnings of their company, and it becomes vastly harder to justify a CEO earning 100x more than an employee. I realise the difference is subtle, and that's why it's often missed. But the output of a person and the output of a thing they created are not identical, and you can't conflate the output of the creation with the creator's effort.