locally grown

[kandrathe]

But here you are describing a complete one sided story. I was not talking about professional athletes, popstars, or people moving around other peoples money getting paid, I was talking about them getting paid 100 times more than the average joe.

Ok, look at it this way. The higher the skill, and the longer the experience, the fewer people there are who can do that job. Pro Athlete or Rock Star salary can be directly tied to "box office draw", so the owner of the team can decide what it is worth to have a star pitcher, versus a string of good relievers. If you compare a baseball team like the Minnesota Twins (who have a comparatively small salary outlay) to the big venue cities like New York or LA, you would find that the big cities go out and grab all the "headliners", but a little team like ours uses its farm teams, and good strategy to compete (and pretty well) with big city teams. It is interesting, since the Twins seem to generate many star players. Once they are recognized as "good", eventually they are on the way out to become the competition.

If you look at a CEO of a huge multinational corporation. At the time a company needs a new CEO, there might be 3 or 4 desirable candidates on the planet, so they get paid according to the laws of supply and demand.

Ok, take a doctor. Many doctors are "general practitioners" so they get the "average pay for doctors" which is still good, because there is a high barrier for entrance into the field. But, there are fewer specialists like say brain surgeon, so the brain surgeon can demand a higher rate of pay, if the hospital wishes to engage his services.

I'd say the average Joe makes the pittance of a salary because he doesn't have enough experience with a desirable skill that is in short supply.