In light of the increasing disparity between compensation of executives to everyone else and corporate and bank bailouts and exorbitant bonuses aimed to keep "talent," do you think the compensation here is equitable, ie based on skills, productivity and results?

In the United States we have a great concentration of wealth than any other first world country, I believe.

"As of 2004, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.3% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.3%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.2%. Table 1 and Figure 1 present further details drawn from the careful work of economist Edward N. Wolff at New York University (2007).:
From "Who Rules America: Wealth, Income and Power"
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

I think the U.S. is built on greatness. The distribution of wealth is how capitalism works. I do think that there is also a wee bit of greed involved with the distribution of wealth. The entire reason why big business has exploited third world nations and inflated the prices of their goods is to create a large gap…to make themselves richer.