Footnote 3

I located the questions on limiting executive salaries that I mentioned the other day:

March 2009 (Fox News/Opinion Dynamics) Do you think the federal government should ever be allowed to regulate the salaries of corporate executives at American companies?  38% yes, 56% no

March 2009 (Quinnipiac)  Do you think the government should limit the amount of money that companies not taking federal funds pay their executives?  30% yes, 64% no

Both of those were coupled with questions about pay at companies that were taking money from the government--for those 64% favored regulation in the Fox poll, 81% favored limits in the Quinnipiac.  I think that "regulation" sounds weaker than "limit," so I'm not sure why support for "regulation" of salaries in "companies that take taxpayer bailouts" (their words) was lower in the Fox poll than support for "limit" in companies that were "taking federal funds" was in the Quinnipiac.  I don't know about the order in which the questions were asked in either poll, but that might be the explanation--if people had said no to the general question, they might be less likely to say yes to the specific one.   However, support for the general principle of regulating/limiting salaries was comparable.   

There is also:

(Gallup)  Do you favor or oppose the federal government taking steps to limit the pay of executives at major companies?

                       Favor   Oppose
June 2009       59%      35%
March 2018    47%      48%

"Taking steps" sounds weaker than "limit" or even "regulation," so I'm not surprised that support was higher.  The drop in support between 2009 and 2018 is interesting. 

The general point is that even though large majorities think executive salaries are too high (I think I've had some posts documenting that), there's much less support for government action to do something about it.