It would seem a sensible thing to do is to look at history, look at great companies, and look at ratios.
Take a great company and ask what was the ratio of pay between those at the top, and those on the floor. The organizers of talent, the collectors and deployers of capital, the decision makers, they should make more. It is a more rare talent. But when does reason leave the building?
There have been times and places where the top to bottom pay ratio is 5x or 10x .... and times when it is 20x or 30x (or 100x). There is no evidence that increasing this difference in compensation has correlated to improved performance. Today the ratio is at historical highs. They take it because they can, not because of any functional purpose, moral sensibility, hard(er) work and so on.
It just plain silliness. Historically, such ratios lead to revolt and war, not always, sometimes a government steps in and redistributes by agreement, sometimes by force.
There have been massive improvements in productivity, the benefits of this have not been shared (and not been even shared by 5x or 10x or 100x ratios. 100% of all productivity gains have gone to the top. The preponderance of these productivity gains were not invented by the top, but they were ultimately implemented there.
Its about sensible ratios. Not Marxism or communism or whatever. There are ratios that history has shown to be sustainable, and there are those that history has shown are not.
The current circumstance falls into the not category. It is in the best interests of the top to cede some ground in the ratio battle.
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