Most people with the title "CEO" don't make all that much money. Much strangeness happens just because of mutual funds and the general distorting effect of the

Most people with the title "CEO" don't make all that much money. Much strangeness happens just because of mutual funds and the general distorting effect of the public stock markets. We've decoupled the owners from the "runners". Prior to roughly the period of time in which Micheal Eisner became CEO of Disney, compensation was mainly salary. People complained that it was too much. So more complicated arrangements emerged - options, that sort of thing. For a modest firm of say, 1000 employees, every 100k to the CEO costs each employee $100 ( assuming all is otherwise zero-sum and perfectly linear). So it's not like there's really much that can be done to improve things for the rank and file. I was watching the beating given to John G. Stumpf by Congress on CSPAN yesterday. It seems that incentive pay/pay for performance might be on the way out if that is any sort of bellwether.