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.
That’s fine if the buck actually stops with them. The problem is they reap the profits when the company does well, and suffer none of the consequences when it goes bad. How many times have we seen companies fuck up because of the decisions by the people in charge only to have a lowly employee suffer for it, while the executives get golden parachutes? You can argue that CEOs earn as much as they do because they are ultimately responsible for the company, but that’s not the case when they get all the benefits and experience none of the negative consequences.