One thing that article doesn't touch on, if we returned ceo pay to 1978 average of 30:1, how much of a raise would that give each employee?
Or do you propose returning Chinese workers' wages to 1978 levels in order to afford restoring American wages?
True, but it's been increasingly overvalued since the middle ages with the liberalisation of compound interest. That particular activity is zero sum and will concentrate wealth in one end until real wealth generation (farming, mining and refining of the results of the former two) becomes infeasible. Right now it's Venezuela, my bet is South Africa being next. Europe in our lifetime.
Unfortunately to American workers, it turns out that the workers who enjoyed the upside were some of the poorest in the world and not the very expensive American workers of the mid-1900s.
Fortunately to American executives, they started the race ahead of everyone else and with their multinationals corporations captured most of the upside from globalization.
If it's a low margin business, it will go bankrupt.
Note that in the past several years, shareholders have experienced massive returns due to rising corporate profits, largely because corporations have held workers' wages stagnant throughout the economic recovery/boom.
I agree that if you split the CEO pay it does not affect so much the employees.
I just wanted to highlight is that the CEO does NOT want the employees in the board as they may see the CEO's salary as unfair. So, to protect his own salary, the CEO keeps employees out of the structures of power.
Then we can argue if is that lack of power the one that keeps or not workers salaries low. But workers are not represented becuase is against the CEO best interest so her own salary can grow unchecked.