Define top. The average (mean) saleries for full professors at the very highest paid private research universities are on the order of 150-160K. Non econ superstar profs at such universities earn around double that. That's good money, but by CEO standards it's outright pathetic. And the superstar econ profs who will be earning two to three times that amount can up their (very high) salaries by quite a bit by going into the private sector.
Nobody in their right mind goes into academia to earn money. If you can get into a top rated Ph.D. program you can also get into a top rated law school. Assuming you do at least average there your starting salary will be the same as that of a tenured full professor at an elite private research university. If you actually manage to achieve the equivalent level of success in your field as one of those profs - i.e. making partner at a good firm, you'll be making a very solid seven figures. Let's not even start at the relative level of compensation in the financial industry.
If their generally reasonable and non-hardship-inducing incomes are predicated upon their perpetual begging and groveling to the powers that be for grant and research money, and upon the production of a continuous stream of work that is considered "good enough" to be publishable, then one can see how they might be somewhat less antagonistic to the system then if they were in fact poor, and if their incomes were completely independent of the corporate power structure.
Or at least, that seems like the logical extension of his argument.
