I see CEO’s as the last working person in the system. They are at least putting in the time and effort to make money. The are “the last working man/woman” in the chain up to the owners. The real travesty is the owners who get all the money without doing any actual work.
If the CEO makes less money, do you think you’d get more? The answer is no. A company will control costs and not pay employees more than they have to. Your salary has nothing to do with the CEOs salary and at least in theory you have a chance to become CEO… more of a chance than you have of becoming an owner.
The inherited wealth, the hedge funds, the owners… they get all the return. They get all the rewords. Even my boss, who started the company I work at, he makes his money by being an owner. His salary as a CEO is pennies vs his salary owning the company. The success of the company should be shared amongst the employees who made it happen, and the truth is they aren’t. That’s the real kick to the nuts, not the salary of the CEO.
While I do mind the insane wealth gap, and I refuse to believe that a CEO is working that much harder/better than the ones on the factory floor, there is one aspect that is often overlooked. Especially in my country where workers’ rights stand really strong: It needs to be possible to fire a CEO with little to no notice. And getting someone to agree to that, and ignore any termination rights other employees (usually and should) have, costs money.
Remember the DeepWater Horizon oil spill when the BP CEO made PR blunder and was replaced almost instantly, so that BP could at least try to save some face? They don’t get fired. They get paid to leave. And you can bet your ass a new job isn’t exactly waiting around the corner in these cases, so the increased pay and severance package will have to account for the long unemployment afterwards too. While i consider CEO pay to be outrageously high, part of it does make sense.