In theory, an efficient system (not necessarily a moral or benevolent system) would reward someone in proportion to the degree they benefited the system. CEOs would (according to the theory) deserve higher salary than the people who worked under them, and the business owner would in most cases deserve a greater reward from the system than would the CEO.

But unregulated capitalism is not an efficient system. A CEO who ran a business into the ground (at great cost to workers, consumers, taxpayers, etc.) might float away with a golden parachute. And business owners have been known to harm the environment, public health, the capitalist system etc. with little or no penalty.

In an unregulated system, the more wealth one amasses (whether properly or improperly), the more one is able to game the system at the expense of all the other members of the system (as with Citizens United, tax loopholes, offshore banking…).

Some billionaires do pay it back. A few, like Warren Buffet, maintain that they’re undertaxed, but they’re in the vast minority.

Unlike real vultures, vulture capitalists create the road kill on which they feast.