I had arguments about this with my father for years and years, usually over breakfast at a greasy spoon. He'd say, "Oprah doesn't need that much money" or "Brett Favre doesn't need that much money". (He couldn't stand Oprah or athletes, although he did have the hots for Barbara Eden when he was in his 80's).
I'd try to explain to him that these people had talents that, while perhaps not as useful as those of computer engineers like him, were nevertheless in demand, and received money commensurate with that demand. If nobody cared whether you could host your TV show, you wouldn't make money. If people were setting aside an hour every day to watch your show, you would make money. Simple as that.
He didn't buy it, and thought the government should regulate how much someone could make. I'd tell him that, if that's the case, it ultimately comes down to one person who makes the call, and asked who that person should be. Of course he said it should be him.
The above is a long way of saying that it's always going to be arbitrary and capricious to say that some person doesn't really need or deserve to make a certain amount of money. Richard Teerlink, the now retired CEO of Harley Davidson, made hundreds of millions of dollars. Was he worth it? He certainly was to the employees when he and two other executives brought the company back from near-bankruptcy in 1984.
Where income has been regulated, it's always been the regulators who've made the real money.
