Pro athletes make too much, I agree, but their professional life is short. Injuries and age force most of them into retirement at about the age by which most of humanity over the course of history has died: their early 40s. Yet they will have to find a way to support themselves for another 30-40 years. Some of them are smart enough to train for another career. Some of them continue in sports as coaches and trainers. Some have enough charisma to become media sports personalities. But many will have to live on this money and any investments they have made with it for the rest of their lives.

CEOs, on the other hand, can continue to collect 200 times the salary of the people who make their standard of living possible for many more years, if they want, and continue to command princely honoraria and lobbying fees after their retirements. Some CEOs and other high-ranking executives have also used their positions to manipulate employee retirement funds and the market value of their companies' stock for their own benefit and that of their friends and associates. No professional athlete has ever endangered a fan's retirement except possibly by an accidental injury at a sporting event.

In the fistfight we call our economic system, the injury to people working for the public good (or even just to people working) done by professional athletes' pay scale is a black eye: visible, unattractive, but ultimately more uncomfortable than dangerous. The CEO problem is more like rabbit punches to the kidneys: not so visible, but painful and possibly crippling.

Then again, I may be looking at it with a librarian's eye. Sports, like film, music and art, are in the 700s in Dewey. They're entertainments, and are treated the same. Actors, musicians, and a certain number of (mostly dead) graphic and fine artists also command exorbitant sums for their art, but, as with athletes, their market determines what they can make. Business is in the 300s, with government, careers, education, civics, law, and other things that make up the very fabric of society. Abuse to that part of our world is more serious than monetary overcharges by people who seek to articulate our hopes, fears, dreams and ideals with the work of their hands, or of their minds, or of their bodies. Also, if offered a ticket to a game or a concert that's too rich for us, or if offered an opportunity to acquire a CD or a painting whose price is too high, we can say no. Regretfully, no. The charges incurred by business abuses are more often hidden, and can remain hidden forever.