[neona]

While I can certainly agree that people can have relative value, and even agree that a disparity of four orders of magnitude might just be possible on occasion (though overall i'm skeptical of that claim), I think we're confusing skill/value to society vs value in terms of money one can extract via their skills/etc.

Generally, at the high end of skill, skill increases linearly, but financial reward can sometimes increase exponentially with it.

While someone may be 100x more skilled than someone else, this can result in them making 10,000x as much money as them. Is that fair? I'm not sure. Certainly some amount of potential reward is helpful, as it may drive some to pursue skill and benefit society as a whole, but I think It's grown out of proportion.

[dgreensp]

If I save someone a million dollars and they give me $10k, just to pick a random example, it doesn't matter how "skilled" I am. I created a whole ton of value that's easily measured in dollars (in this case), and I take home a piece of it. You could say I must be skilled at something; making money, if nothing else.

As long as an individual can own a company or part of a company (capitalism), and given that companies regularly create a huge amount of value out of thin air, some individuals will be entitled to a fraction of the value created. It's that simple.