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Ask Americans, "Should people be permitted to earn as much money as they can?" and you will get a resounding "yes". For many, the American dream includes the prospect that they, too, can be millionaires someday. Who has the right to quash their entrepreneurial hopes?

Besides, their capitalist intuitions tell them that some workers really are "worth" more money than others. It costs $7 per hour to hire a burger-flipper who can fix ketchup and $50 per hour to hire a house-flipper who can fix plumbing. This fact doesn't establish their worth as human beings. It doesn't mean it is morally fair that one's labor can feed a family and the other's can't. But in purely economic terms, one service is in fact worth more than the other. You simply cannot find anyone willing to pay $50 per hour for a flash-fryer nor a plumber willing to work for $7 per hour. What is wrong with reaping the benefits of talent and education? Why should anyone turn down money they can earn honestly? And what gives anyone else the right to take it away from them? We can predict consensus on this question.

Now, narrow the question to a specific profession. Should baseball players be permitted to earn tens of millions of dollars? Television personalities? Rock stars? Corporate executives? Some people will revise their responses because they may not identify or sympathize with people in these professions. Many view these high-earners as greedy and undeserving. Perhaps they have good reason, but they may also have simple prejudice. We wouldn't generalize about enforcing income limits based on race, religion, sex, or country of origin. Why would we make assumptions about people based on their livelihood and seek to prevent them from practicing their trade?

While some companies have shown irresponsibility, shortsightedness, callousness and greed, we should not be too hasty to apportion blame to individuals. A poor leader rarely acts alone. "The typical [airplane] accident involves seven consecutive human errors," Malcolm Gladwell reported in his book Outliers (2008). So, too, the responsibility for a corporate "crash" is usually shared. The parties who make decisions on executive compensation will be (or should be) hard-pressed to agree who should be penalized for their company's failures and to decide exactly how much their pay should be docked.

Narrow the question one final time: Should executive compensation be determined not only by industry standards, but by federal law? Thinking Americans now become

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