I think the point was, the excesses of executive pay (which are indeed hard to justify) don't add up to enough payroll dollars to help the rank and file achieve a raise.
Suppose the CEO of a global corporation with 10,000 employees is making a million dollars too much (by someone's standards). So you take the million away from the CEO and pay the employees $100 each.....not really material.
The really egregious overpaid execs who make the papers may employ 100,000 people worldwide. I'm not saying things are fair, but the excess money paid to execs can be small change in the corporate cash flow, where a 5% eaise to workers is bigger coin.
- Paul