With respect to tech companies, the compensation ratio is a good starter to get people to think about wealth inequality but as tool or metric for public policy,

With respect to tech companies, the compensation ratio is a good starter to get people to think about wealth inequality but as tool or metric for public policy, it is useless. Here's my intuition on that: - it doesn't answer how much of the wealth was created (endogenous) or taken (zero sum): tech companies can simultaneously induce new demand and preferences while replacing older companies - it doesn't answer whether the average worker or society as a whole is better or worse with a lower or higher compensation ratio, because by averaging you lose nuance; for example, are more or less people employed by tech companies now then by the companies that were replaced? are the worker salaries themselves higher or lower compared previous worker salaries? For me, higher compensation ratios in _tech_ companies is good for people in tech: tech requires less labor for inch of market cap, while that labor is compensated higher. Whether or not that's an overall good for society though, idk.