In this sim, the leagues are not in an association. Each has their own amateur draft.
Using 1990 as the base financial year,
L1 = 100%
L2 = 50%
L3 = 25%
L4 = 10%
One thing that may prove significant is that I have set the financials to re-import each year. I'm curious as to whether the percentage offsets carryover when this happens. If not, it would go a long way towards explaining what we're seeing. Sim 2 does not do this, so when the results are in, we can compare.
Over 15 years, the averages per league of total revenue, payroll, and budget look like this:

At first glance, at least the numbers are pointed in the right direction. The highest league has the highest payroll, revenue and budget, and the lowest level league has the lowest.
However, I'm not really seeing the kind of spread that I'd like. For one thing, there's only a 20% difference between the top league and the bottom league in terms of annual budget. This is despite there being a 90% difference in the setup.
(to be continued - I am having trouble posting images in line, so will break this into multiple posts until I figure that out...sorry)