I hate lavish CEO salaries.

I hate the fact that the CEO's of major corporations live in penthouse apartments while the worker that provides the labor to run the company must watch their dimes and nickels.

But in my growing understanding of economics, I have gradually become aware that CEO salaries, while insane, are a perfect example of the law of supply and demand.

See, a good company can't do anything without a good leader. The best product in the world is worthless without someone with the capability to market the product and to oversee the infrastructure to produce, store, ship, and market the product.

And the truth is, for good company heads, there is a growing demand, with a decreasing supply. Companies need someone with the savvy to ride a business through its ups and downs, and to not only handle current successes and failures, but to foresee and draft plans for future successes, with contingency plans to redirect the company in the case of future failures. In other words, someone with vision.

These need to be people who do more than react; they need to be able to spot trends and to predict what will happen not only tomorrow, but beyond tomorrow, in order to ensure that their business does not fall into the abyssal plain of businesses that once had good ideas but failed to follow through with more good ideas.

Those people are, in fact, rare. Factory workers, sadly, aren't. And when someone with a good mind becomes available, there are a good number of companies willing to bid for their services. They are the best of the best, and they drive the engines of the free market.

The best way to decrease CEO salaries is to create a greater supply. To educate ourselves and our children to see the big picture, to be able to direct not only their own lives, but the lives of others. To be good leaders with a strong vision and a sense of responsibility. And we can do that in many small ways, first and foremost, by not perceiving ourselves as victims, but rather as captains of our own destiny. For if we can't get beyond the mindset of seeing ourselves as victims, how can we help but see our businesses as victims of trends we could have anticipated with a more positive, proactive approach.

The future truly is NOT in our stars, but in ourselves. It is up to US to remedy the problems we see in society. If we want to see greater wage equity for the working man, we need to produce more leaders to meet the demand for the same.