[...] In the United States in recent years, one frequently has heard this type of justification for the stratospheric pay of supermanagers (50– 100 times average income, if not more). Proponents of such high pay argued that without it, only the heirs of large fortunes would be able to achieve true wealth, which would be unfair. In the end, therefore, the millions or tens of millions of dollars a year paid to supermanagers contribute to greater social justice. This kind of argument could well lay the groundwork for greater and more violent inequality in the future. The world to come may well combine the worst of two past worlds: both very large inequality of inherited wealth and very high wage inequalities justified in terms of merit and productivity (claims with very little factual basis, as noted).
Meritocratic extremism can thus lead to a race between supermanagers and
rentiers, to the detriment of those who are neither.