Personal initiative and ambition provides the motivation to develop marketable skills.
Education is available to provide instruction which will help individuals with the ambition develop marketable skills.
Marketable skills in conjunction with personal ambition creates the opportunity for the individual to earn higher levels of income.
Income inequality is caused by a lack of personal ambition, IMO. Personal ambition is destroyed by the socialist programs, e.g. welfare, that give people something for nothing.
However, let's get the Democrat demagogues out of the picture for a moment and examine the issue of CEO pay.
Bob Nardelli essentially got FIRED as Chairman of the Board for doing a poor job at Home Depot. In spite of that, the Board of Directors voted him a $210 million Golden Parachute at the expense of share holders (that would be the rest of us with mutual funds with Home Depot in our portfolios).
Bob Nardelli is was replaced by Frank Blake, the company's vice-chairman, who will now be the next in line at Home Depot to get a similar massive Golden Parachute, whether he does a good job or a terrible job, at stockholder expense.
Some corporations are "public" companies but are run as the personal enrichment piggy banks for the Board of Directors. That hurts the company, the stockholders, the employees and the consumer.
It's an issue that should be examined.
Too bad that the Democrats are using it to target everybody with a high income that actually earns it.