Not sure about everyone else, but for me it's the asymmetry involved. CEOs (and many other execs) don't have a lot of downside. They usually have a contract w

Not sure about everyone else, but for me it's the asymmetry involved. CEOs (and many other execs) don't have a lot of downside. They usually have a contract which guarantees their pay (short of malfeasance), and they tend to get big bonuses. Upon mergers, some do get cut, but often with golden parachutes. The working stiff gets laid off, and if you're, say, a machinist in Cleveland, good luck finding a decent job again. If you're an exec, you do a quick stint in consulting to land on your feet. Executive decisions are not hard or stressful enough to justify that pay. It may be tough to lay people off, but it's a hell of a lot more stressful to be laid-off. Generals, Colonels, Majors, and Captains send people into harms way (literally into gunfire), which is way tougher than anything a CEO will ever do, yet they aren't paid for their "hard decisions". Can a good CEO make a huge difference to a company? Absolutely! But the asymmetry is also that a bad CEO doesn't experience a similar downside (being fired after you've made ten million dollars is not a hardship!).