The Myth of CEO Compensation

Recently this chart has been popping up in my feed again: Now, this has sparked some of the same debates as when I last saw it. I would say that, broadly, there are two camps that people fall into when it comes to CEO compensation. First, there are those that argue that this is morally wrong, and this growing inequality is a sign of moral bankruptcy in our society. The other argument that I see is that CEOs make, decisions with a much larger scale than the average worker. For example, a mistake that a worker makes could cost the company $10, while the mistake that a CEO makes could cost the company $10,000,000. This argument is usually also accompanied by the statement that since a good chunk of CEO compensation is in the form of stock and options, that this gives them an enormous incentive to align their decisions with the companies benefits. Now, I believe that there are several problems with that second argument. First, is the fact that many of the CEOs with the highest compensatio...