I wouldn’t say more important, but it definitely has to do with how much revenue is then generated for someone higher up. It all comes back to capitalism and the 1%. Paying athletes and tech workers more to attract better talent directly affects the money coming in to the people who pay their salaries and the shareholders. Paying teachers more doesn’t affect the stock market in a visible way so no one (hyperbole) cares.
I would argue that by allowing the top 1% to retain their wealth and have undo influence capitalism is fundamentally broken.
Take Uber for example, as of early 2020 they had yet to become profitable. I would argue that if a 12 year old company isn't profitable than maybe we shouldn't be justifying the higher salaries for the employees in that company. I think that ride hailing apps in general are a service that provides value, but I can't help but think if Uber didn't have the vast amounts of venture capital backing would they have been forced to charge market rates and would this have allowed cab drivers etc, the ability to adapt. How can we have a truly free market when companies can operate at a loss for 12 years while driving their competitors out of business?
I'm going to share another anecdote here. There is a mom in my office who works for a government agency and seems to be making a good income relative to the private firms in the same industry. I've known her for 9 years now, she's probably in her early 50s. She told me recently she had been at her job for 25 years. Seeing the look of shock on my face, she explained she had been hired out of high school and worked her way up going to college along the way. The shock was still there on my face, so she further explained there had been a job fair at her high school and that's how she got hired. She probably graduated high school somewhere between 1986 - 1990ish. I graduated in 1997 and remember college fairs but don't remember any job fairs and certainly no government agencies were recruiting.
What happened to us? This sounds like a fairly rare path high schoolers take at this point. Old timers in my industry talk about how they would pay for dental/medical school tuition by cleaning the anatomy lab over the summer, they probably graduated in the 50s, 60s, maybe 70s. All of this is impossible now so something has to give. I feel like we're so broken and corrupt as a country and the only choice I have is to figure out how to work the system so my @@@@@@ start their young adult lives with a financial boost to get them ahead of the pack however possible. Talking about a $15 minimum wage is just a distraction for the masses while the 1% continues to 1%.