Since people are debating capitalism, I'll throw in my two cents. The main problem with capitalism is that there is a fundamental mismatch between capitalism, which assumes that the goal of everyone is to maximize wealth, and that for some reason doesn't look into the fact that even money itself has diminishing returns, and human psychology. Psychological experiments show that for creative/intellectually demanding tasks (which I assume all C*O tasks are), increasing incentives actually Decreases performance. The best results come from giving people enough so they don't have to worry about their living expenses, and let them do their work. And hell, look at the responses in this thread. If you were to get many times the amount of money you'd need to retire, then you'd just work hard for a year and retire. Right? If I'm already filthy rich, I don't need to care about my job.
The thing is, until a certain point, you associate money with concrete items you need. Beyond that point though, once all your real material needs are satisfied, that extra money is just a number, so to get any satisfaction of out it, people associate money with the next thing that generates some sort of psychological return: affirming their worth through comparing how much they make compared to Others in the industry. The thing is, everybody thinks they're above-average, so people in the position to do so (i.e. people who are buddies with all the people who determine their bonuses) get their packages to keep increasing, starting a war where everyone wants to outdo one another in terms of how much they're paid.
I'm a Chartered Financial Analyst. How much money you make often has little to do with how hard you work or what your competences are, but with how good you are at making money. That's it. You had these billionaire hedge-fund managers who became rich because they conned a bunch of people with promises of huge return, but in fact returned below-market performance after accounting for fees. My parents also knew this girl at their company who bought a few houses, leased them to expats, and got rich off it. That took her no effort at all, she was just good at making money. OTOH, you don't have many super rich scientists or mathematicians, even though entire industries are built upon their discoveries. They're simply not in the type of profession to make big money.
You're probably wondering what the alternatives are. In Nordic countries for example (Finland, Denmark etc.) taxes are shit high, but people also enjoy extremely high standards of living such as some of the world's best education systems with teachers who forego much higher-paying jobs because they get respected, great healthcare, good social protection etc., so they're fine with it. These countries also score highest in the world on happiness indexes. And they score very high as places that are good for business too. As it turns out, high taxes are only a problem if you get shit in return. They're less of a problem if you get a generally awesome place to live in in return.
At its base, part of the problem is that most people actually Believe that money is everything. Money is just a means of getting from others that which you 1. don't get for free, 2. can't make for yourself (ex. if you're good at cooking you save a lot vs restaurant fees, if you exercise you slash medical bills) and 3. can't get from others for free (stuff like the companionship and trust of family and friends). More people are realising all this though, that's why you start to see more people working hard to save up for a few years then doing stuff like going off-grid living in tiny houses where they grow their own food etc.
