Sorry, folks, but that’s obscene. For those who think criticism of such obscenity is due to envy or greed, I suggest you look to St. Basil, who said that if you have two coats you’re robbing the poor, or St. Jerome, who said that wherever their is opulence there is always theft somewhere behind it.

To put it bluntly, corporate capitalism is corrupt, and represents “the emancipation of avarice”: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/the-emancipation-of-avarice

If there’s one thing we don’t need it’s Robb Report Christianity.

You have not given us any account of why executive pay in the US should be higher than comparable economies. Executive pay (in a public corporation) is money that could be returned to investors. Of course, some level of higher pay is needed to encourage people to take executive positions and perform well in them. This is not very disputable.

But, the question is what that level of pay should be. Yes, it should be higher than non-executive pay. But how much higher?

Let’s imagine that American corporate law (probably unwittingly) has structured corporations such that executives have much more power than investors or other stakeholders. Thus, executives, quite naturally, use that greater power to take cash-flows that could go to investors (or an infinite number of other places).

This is a question of fairness and it has nothing to do with envy. The question simply isn’t whether executives should be paid more than other employees, but rather how MUCH more should they be paid. This is not an amount set in stone – it’s varied greatly across history and across geographies.

The problem with asserting that America’s very high levels of executive pay is simply an output of an efficient market is that executives do not get recruited in anything approaching a free market. See Rakesh Khurana’s book, Searching for a Corporate Saviour, for the details.

Further, one of my points is that government structures how corporations are run. That is, the legal framework for a corporation is created by government – how the corporate board is run, for just one example. This is not something that the market does itself. There are substantial differences in how corporate boards are structured even between relatively similar economies. There is not much reason to believe that American corporate law is a priori somehow better than that of other countries.

There are many similar market-structuring activities done by government or nonprofits or associations, some of which initially seem unrelated to the macro economy. One instance from economic history is: higher education in England was, until the 1840s, limited to precisely two universities that held a legal monopoly on higher education. But, in addition, these two institutions were not directly under government control, but independent non-profits.

Thus, the entire English educational structure quickly became inadequate during the Second Industrial Revolution, which required large numbers of personnel educated in engineering, management, accounting, marketing and science. And the English state, because it had such limited capacities and experience in organizing and funding public higher education, took many decades – something between 40 and 80 years – to develop the sort of universities needed. (The two previously existing universities essentially refused to make the needed transition ever.)

Because the US and Germany readily had the capability and experience of creating public higher education, this factor greatly aiding them in exploiting the Second Industrial Revolution, while the UK generally was not able to exploit the new opportunities as easily.

Unfairness could describe a situation where two people are rewarded radically differently for the same work, treated differently for doing the same action, etc., but that’s nothing like the situation we’re talking about here. Even if it were, I don’t see why one shouldn’t keep in mind the parable of the workers in the vineyard.

Joe, sure detachment is emotionally healthy, but it may not always be pragmatically prudent. What if I’m one of the owners of the company — which I’m likely to be if I own any retirement assets or other mutual funds? Isn’t it then rational of me to care whether I’m overpaying my CEO, or whether I might be able to get a better return by reducing his pay or going with somebody else cheaper?

And as for the free market: we don’t really have that here in America, not for large companies like the ones in the study.

In cases where CEO pay is excessively high, it is precisely because of a distortion in the market pricing mechanism, caused by an imbalance of power between CEOs and investors. Investors nominally appoint the board to look out for their interests and to check the power of the CEO. But CEOs often have the power to control the board themselves, and thus to game the system by controlling both sides of a supposedly balancing relationship.

So “excessive pay” by its definition is not a result of free market forces, but rather of the circumvention of those forces. So you see how it could be sensible and prudent to look at the statistics comparing CEO pay in the US to CEO pay in other countries and to wonder if maybe such a market failure is occurring in our economy.

And so, Brian, the desire to examine this could easily be motivated by any number of things other than “envy” — rational economic interest, mere curiosity, etc.

The bottom line: detachment is the only sane response to the non-problem of alleged overpayment of corporate chieftains.

In the end, it makes little to no difference in my life what those guys haul down. By and large, they are not paying themselves, but are being paid by boards of directors, who are in general fairly independent and, speaking for the companies’ owners, are charged with getting the right people in high places to do very demanding jobs. Boards are, by and large, made up of smart and accomplished people who are qualified to make those judgments. Qualified though not infallible. But that’s about as good as we can do in an imperfect world. We certainly don’t want to entrust the government to make these decisions instead of the boards!

Detachment–because it makes so little difference to me what these guys make. But on second thought, it does. Their salaries are the logical consequence of a free market. The free market is the best engine of wealth creation we have. Mess with it (eg, by poor tax policy, taking over the health care or the auto industry, arbitrarily capping CEOs’ salaries, etc) and you interfere with wealth creation. Then, in general, everyone is poorer.

Thus, on second thought, the pay of these CEOs affects me after all. I am richer because they are because the (mostly) free market has made it so!

That the gap between owners of wealth and workers is so great is a sign that our society is ill.

That we now recognize men who do nothing – but who use their money wisely – as “working” more than men who actually produce, is a sign that our society is ill.

This is not me being communist, or even socialist: I recognize that competition is vital, and that letting men enjoy the fruits of their labors is a necessary component of providing the incentives needed to growth.

But we will be a better society when we can find ways of incentivizing (is that really a word now?) that don’t destroy the next generation’s ability to start from something resembling a meritocracy.

It is a sad, sick thing that right now people quite accurately perceive that what kindergarten your child gets into is a major factor in what social class he will end up as part of.

I hate the way both liberals and conservatives are “waging class war” even as both sides claim they’re not. We have a serious problem that needs solving, and neither attacking the rich – nor defending huge wage gaps – will help; what is called for is a real solution.

They expedite the exit of a bad CEO. If a CEO is underperforming, it is ideal to remove him ASAP. “Golden parachutes” facilitate this, eliminating protracted, costly and ugly firings.

They allow bad companies to hire a good CEO for a turnaround project. To accept the CEO position at a mediocre or failing firm, a candidate PRUDENTLY seeks a backstop in case the firm fails. This compensates him for the risk his career could suffer.