I'd say that the main problem then isn't the income - it's just that the person receiving it can't manage his or her own money. It's also funny that the same person is considered the best person to manage a big corporation...
If people like that are the best available for the job, it's just scary.
Oh, no, living the lifestyle you need to live to be a successful investment banker is incredibly expensive. You really do need a big impressive house (or penthouse in Manhattan) to impress clients with. You have to stay at the same resorts where your clients stay. You have to do a thousand little things that say "money is no object" in order for people to trust you with their money. Irrational but true.
It probably is rational for them to spend into debt in the early part of their career to build up credibility.
If you need this and that to impress your clients, wouldn't it be more rational if the -company- owned the house and paid for the resort? Then when they replace their CEO they could continue using the same impressive resources instead of having the new CEO buy the same stuff once more.
Even the goverment does this - puts new presidents in the same old White House instead of letting each new one build his own.
And perhaps even more interesting - who gave money to the clients to spend on such unproductive things? It's the client's money that pays for everything in the end, of course.
I'm sure it's human nature to fall for flattery and impressive displays of wealth, but since most of this money comes from institutions of various kinds (many of them owned or controlled by governments around the world), there should be a at least a decent amount of checking what the money is used for. It's one thing to waste your own money this way, but quite another to waste other people's (sp?) money.
If people like that are the best available for the job, it's just scary.