Salary limits

In 1939, a Roper/Fortune survey asked:

"Do you think there should be a law limiting the amount of money any individual is allowed to earn in a year?"  24% said yes, 70% no

In 1943, the Office of Public Opinion Research asked "When the war is over, do you think it would be a good idea or a bad idea for us to have a top limit on the amount of money any one person can get in a year?"  40% said yes, and 51% said no.

In 1946, the Opinion Research Corporation asked "Do you think it would be a good thing for the country if the government put a top limit on the salary any man could make?"  They repeated that in 1953, twice in 1955, and 1961 with the following results:
         
            Yes      No
1946     32%    62%
1953     17%    78%
1955     17%    78%
1955     15%    81%
1961     21%    68%
[1962     21%    68%]*

In 1981 a survey by Civic Services (an organization I hadn't heard of before), asked people about this statement:  "There should be a top limit on incomes so that no one can earn more than $100,000 a year."  20% agreed and 75% disagreed

In 1994, a survey by Reader's Digest and the Institute for Social Inquiry asked " Should there be a top limit on incomes so that no one can earn more than one million dollars a year?"  22% said yes, and 74% said no.

Oddly, no similar question seems to have been asked since then, despite growing concern with inequality.   But it seems that support was quite steady at about 20%, except for the increase during and right after the war.  I doubt that  the exact numbers in the last two questions mattered much, since but $100,000 in 1981 would be about $300,000 today, and $1,000,000 in 1994 would be about 1.75 million.

There have been a few questions about limiting salaries in particular occupations.  In 1991, a CBS News poll asked "Do you think there should be a limit on how much professional baseball players can earn in a year, or should baseball players be allowed to earn as much as team owners are willing to pay them" 49% said yes, 47% no

In 2009 a CBS News poll asked "Do you think the federal government should put a limit on the amount of money that senior executives can earn at financial institutions, or do you think this is something the federal government should not be involved in?"  46% said yes, 46% said shouldn't be involved.

I thought there was also one about CEOs in general, but I can't locate it now.

*I think this is just a duplicate listing of the 1961 survey.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]