I make it my mission in my professional life to capture as much of that value as I can and do with it as I see fit. Which usually means spending it in productive ways with businesses that enrich the community.
I can definitely appreciate the work, as I'm a business owner. I know this kind of objectivity is a bit strange, but I have both employees and clients, so I see both sides of the table on a regular basis. I'm just calling it like I see it.
So if you could be getting more elsewhere, then the others who are splitting up the profits are getting more compensation than they created value - others who are getting far less than their market value aren't part of the negotiation, unless your employer is thinking of hiring them.
In short: If you're thinking of working in Finance, and your employer has no intention of hiring a starving programmer from another country, then you're underpaid. If your employer is looking into outsourcing, and you're not searching for jobs, you're overpaid.
Neither is any more immoral than the other and neither captures more than their fair share of value.
But in reality, in any organization of sufficient size, you have a lot of people who don't actually do anything creative clamoring to capture that excess value generated by the people at the bottom (and at the top!). These are the people you are trying to push out, not the productive, well compensated people.
Suppose the toolmaker maintains these profits by keeping his thumb on the wood-seller who can barely support his family selling 80 cent pieces of wood. If the toolmaker paid the wood-seller $1 or $1.30, this would be more in line with what the wood is worth. The fairness of these price points can be argued.
Now we're back to considering whether engineers are underpaid!
Employers will only pay as much as it takes to keep you from leaving. At 150k a year the ratio of people who would be willing and capable of replacing you is pretty high.
The point is that if you don't take it, people above you do.
It's not returned to some global pool of good-will.
Salaries will affect the price of your service. That price is paid by everyone else who doesn't work for your company and passed along. You are taking a bigger share from everyone.