Quite right. The CEO pay issue has juice. It's much less abstract than the gini index. It is also less rigorous in an analytical sense, hence less far-reaching as criticism than a discussion of inequality. But you have to work with what you've got.
>> And how do you explain the popularity of a
film like Titanic (a movie I must confess I've never seen myself) which
portrays the rich rather poorly (so I've heard)?
>>>>
I think the rich-poor angle is coopted in Titanic. After all, the heart of the story is a hackneyed romance between poor Jack and rich whatzer-name that has been played a million times. In the film, one of the richest guys on the boat for inexplicable reasons does not try to escape, but asks his butler to get him a brandy.
More than anything else, the film is a banal preoccupation with Death. That plus its special effects explains its appeal, IMO. Reminds me of the asteroid film where a tidal wave engulfs the Eastern seaboard. In both films, shot after shot of individuals anticipating death, dying, and shown in death. Nothing more than a squib about each one -- just enough to present another tiny portrait. The best proof of all this was the director's moronic speech accepting the Oscar. The class angle is landscape. The foreground is the romance, the inane surprise ending, and corpses with faces of people you never really get to know or care about.
mbs