The thing that strikes me as odd is that some jobs that are safety critical, such as airline pilots, tend to attract high pay, whereas other jobs, such as butcher, do not:

https://www.eurosurveillance.org/con...02.01.00134-en

I think in the end 26 people died in that outbreak, so hardly a 777s worth, but it illustrates the general idea. Another example would be coal miners (at least in the days of mining by hand), when many hundreds of lives could be lost if a single, very poorly paid, worker (or child worker) screwed up.

I'm not saying the fact a pilot's role is safety-critical isn't part of the explanation (and justification) for their pay being high, just that it's probably a very complicated issue, there are a lot of other factors at work.