How much value does the collecting of shopping carts gain a corporation, versus some employee in their mid-20s working on a core component of their company's machine learning offering? Depends on a number of factors, but generally speaking it's safe to say the latter provides substantially more value to the bottom line.

Saying there's no correlation to the value you provide your employer, and your pay is patently absurd, and simply pointing to some outliers (like CEOs) doesn't make this a binary function. If you provide great value, you will make a lot more than someone who fulfills functions a 15 year old can be trained to do in 30 minutes, and likewise, you'll be that much more difficult to replace.