Paul Volcker, a man whose achievements dwarf those of Hindery, is of course much more attuned to reality. See also some surprising pther "great men" who agree with Volcker:

“The market did not go up because businessmen got so much smarter,” he said, adding that the 1950s and 1960s, which the new tycoons denigrate as bureaucratic and uninspiring, “were very good economic times and no one was making what they are making now.”

James D. Sinegal, chief executive of Costco, the discount retailer, echoes that sentiment. “Obscene salaries send the wrong message through a company,” he said. “The message is that all brilliance emanates from the top; that the worker on the floor of the store or the factory is insignificant.”

A legendary chief executive from an earlier era is similarly critical. He is Robert L. Crandall, 71, who as president and then chairman and chief executive, led American Airlines through the early years of deregulation and pioneered the development of the hub-and-spoke system for managing airline routes. He retired in 1997, never having made more than $5 million a year, in the days before upper-end incomes really took off.

He is speaking out now, he said, because he no longer has to worry that his “radical views” might damage the reputation of American or that of the companies he served until recently as a director. The nation’s corporate chiefs would be living far less affluent lives, Mr. Crandall said, if fate had put them in, say, Uzbekistan instead of the United States, “where they are the beneficiaries of a market system that rewards a few people in extraordinary ways and leaves others behind.”

“The way our society equalizes incomes,” he argued, “is through much higher taxes than we have today. There is no other way.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Levelling used to be a virtue in America. The lionization of the CEO and Corporate America that began to occur in earnest in the Media in the 80s has helped turn it into a vice.

This is a serious problerm that our country has not come to grips with in a serious way - mostly I think because of the Iraq Debacle, which has crowded out all other major issues. But days of reckoning approach. Warren Buffet said:

This is a significantly richer country than 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago,” he declared, backing his assertion with a favorite statistic. The national income, divided by the population, is a very abundant $45,000 per capita, he said, a number that reflects an affluent nation but also obscures the lopsided income distribution intertwined with the prosperity. “Society should place an initial emphasis on abundance,” Mr. Buffett argued, but “then should continuously strive” to redistribute the abundance more equitably.

(Emphasis supplied.) I think what Buffet is missing is that the two have gone hand in hand in America throughout its history