I have to say though, I always assume that anyone who believes that money follows a meritocracy hasn't spent much time with the very wealthy. Most are really not all that impressive for the most part compared to typical doctor/lawyer/professor level performers.
The people paying them beg to differ with you.
In all seriousness though, making more money doesnt mean you are a better/smarter person. You are just willing to deliver a service that many other people are not.
This is how we ensure that everyone doesnt decide to be video game testers for careers.
I think the assumption you are making is that making a lot of money is a choice that people make.
That when they are say 16 and thinking about their career, or whatever age, people start deciding "you know, I think I'll become a CEO" or "I want to work at Walmart as a greeter" or other variants on this.
The underlying assumptions you are making are:
- Everyone has the same opportunity to make income (as well as massive income such as CEO pay)
- People who do not do this are choosing to not do so
- Everyone has equal opportunity and ability to improve their socioeconomic status
- Everyone has similar innate abilities and skills
In this mindset, you are correct that such disproportionate pay is ok, because everyone has the same opportunities.
However... I strongly disagree with these assumptions being true. I am wildly successful even by American standards. I do not know what my income/wealth percentiles are but I am on an easymode life compared to the average American. Why? Because I chose good intelligence and parents in the "character selection" stage of life. I have certainly put effort in myself but the reality is, I was just setup for success when I was born and throughout my childhood.
It is naive of me to think that the average inner city black male baby with a parent in jail and the other on drugs had remotely the same opportunities I do, even if born with the same intellect. It's just blatantly naive to pretend this is the case.
John Rawls' Veil of Ignorance is really great to illustrate this perspective. If you were analyzing society, not knowing where you'd be placed socioeconomically (including things like parents, childhood experiences, etc) would you see it as fair? If you knew there was a 25% chance of being dropped into the experience of someone in the bottom 25% of society income wise, would you be ok with the general equality of society?
And you can't go, "well duh I'd just move out of it" because that's not the point of this exercise. The point is to imagine yourself
with their experiences and life. That includes the culture they grew up in, societies biases against them, etc.
Now it's possible you think that American society is fair from this perspective. In which case, we just disagree on this. But I find most people in the top 25% think about inequality quite differently when they imagine a 3/4 chance they are born not into a family in the top 25% but the bottom 75% or even bottom 25%.