If a normal employee at say walmart brings in $100 worth of value a day to the company, and the CEO executes a few big multi-million dollar deals that month, then the CEO in fact would be significantly more productive (in terms of capital to the company) than the average employee.
> and that factors other than pure merit allowed them to amass that much wealth.
Yes like taking the risk of starting such a business to employ others and putting down the capital which might be lost.
I also don't know who you think would enforce some kind of "fairness" limit on how much money someone makes. The government doing so would likely be ruled unconstitutional and wouldn't likely ever be passed in the first place through congress.
If all the normal employees quit and Walmart can't replace them, how much money does Walmart lose?
Perhaps we should calculate value to the company based on that sort of reasoning.