I have no stake in the discussion, but "pay their talent the most" could be among comparable job titles, or something like that?

Then it's a race to the bottom with titles. You're no longer a software engineer, you're a "computer technician".

H-1B is probably one of the most gamed and abused visa categories, perhaps next to marriage-related stuff.

But there are very few that are handed out !! Compared to illegal and marriage related ones and the bar is pretty high !!

The point is that paying more isn't gaming the system

(and to be super explicit, yes if the US were to choose to allocate 25k annual h1b by ranked wage & thus all 25k were to go to various flavours of computer programmer or financial modeller, that seems totally fine)

How is that a problem? If they aren't willing to pay as much, then obviously they don't need it as much.