Because it's our money to spend as we wish

There's a simple answer to this latest little campaign about executive pay:

The government is to outline moves later to make companies justify high levels of executive pay.

Among the measures under consideration are pay ratios, which would show the gap in earnings between the chief executive and an average employee.

Shareholders would also be handed more powers to vote against bosses' pay, while workers would have a "voice" on boards, under the consultation plans.

Theresa May has made tackling corporate excess one of her priorities in office.

There's a complicated answer as well of course:

Though Japanese firms benefit from a high-quality workforce and invest in R&D as much as their US counterparts, they fall behind US firms in terms of their earning power. This column suggests that corporate structures in the two countries could be an explanation for this phenomenon. The findings indicate that CEOs of US firms aim to maximise profits, whereas CEOs of Japanese firms prioritise long-term corporate survival.

American CEOs get paid very much more than Japanese. American CEOs also appear to do a very much better job than Japanese. Our complicated answer would therefore be that higly paid CEOs are worth being highly paid.

However, our simple answer is that up there in the headline. It is not up to the government to tell us what we may do with the money in our pockets. Whether my £5 is to be transferred into a pint, a bumper car ride, a pork pie or a nice healthy salad is up to me. For it is my money.

The money inside a company belongs, after the payments to those with other legal rights to it, to the shareholders. How they wish to deploy that residual, that profit, is up to them because it is their money. If they wish to send it to starving babies in Africa, so be it. Or pay it out as dividends, or build a yogurt knitting factory, or offer it as however much pay they desire to offer to the person running their company for them.

The only justification a company needs to offer to the government or anyone else is: It's our money to spend as we wish.