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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

In the 1950's, American CEO's earned about 11 times as much as the median employee at their firm. Today it's about 200x. Are you claiming that the gap in value contributed between CEOs and employees has increased by a factor of 20 in that time? Do you have any evidence for this?

Absent any, I think it is much more reasonable to conclude that there's little to no justification for current CEO compensation and that they draw their current compensations mostly "because they can".

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You have to keep up with the increasing sophistication of lies enabling business, so perhaps? (not sure I should put /s here as I am torn if I meant it seriously or as a satire; it's kinda blurry these days)

Why do boards and shareholders agree to that?

EDIT: So collusion amongst CEOs explains why boards agree to it. Why do shareholders?

Groupthink.

Who is on the board? Boards are mostly made up of CEOs of other companies. Agreeing to excessive compensation is a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" situation.

Because they are also CEOs at large companies and also want bloated salaries so they approve them for their counterparts.

Because the average shareholder has negligible say in the operations of the company or who makes up the board.

So what. How is CEO pay any of your concern. It sounds like jealousy. For large companies, CEO pay is insignificant to the total company’s revenues. If the CEO make $1 that would suddenly result in money to pay more to employees. $10,000,000 salary divided among 20,000 workers and each worker gets $200 extra which is and extra $17 per month.

The his focus on CEO pay is nothing more than old-fashioned class warfare jealousy. Think how much more money workers could make if we cut payroll taxes by 20% — a lot more than if they paid the CEO $1. But those on the left complaining about CEO pay would go apoplectic just discussing tax cuts. Because the issue isn’t really about pay, it’s an ideological thing.

Aww how cute, the CEO defends paying his employees 50,000 while he makes 10,000,000. "Its just jealousy folks!"

I'm sure Louis XVI was thinking the same thing right before the public summarily removed his head from his body.

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