We should remember Ruskin's famous injunction: "There is no wealth but life." In other words, the best architect isn't necessarily the richest, nor the writer, nor the doctor. Talent and commitment have only a loose connection to salary. To reduce the intensity of feeling about salaries, you can either pay everyone exactly the same, or try your best to educate people into seeing salary as not especially significant – just as we have fortunately and heroically managed to teach people to see race and religion as incidental to people's characters.