>People intuitively like the idea of reducing inequality and hate the idea that the fact they make less money than the other guy might be entirely rational.

Mediocre and average employees like the idea of reducing inequality, because the mediocre employees stand to financially benefit and the average employees can expect little to no change in compensation while reaping emotional rewards.

For highly paid employees (high impact, high competence, whatever the reason), reducing inequality goes against their direct financial interests. Inequality gets reduced by dragging their compensation down, not increasing everyone else's.