My devil's advocate take is that this is downstream of corporate consolidation. Corporate consolidation IMO has become easier with greater economies of scale ac

My devil's advocate take is that this is downstream of corporate consolidation. Corporate consolidation IMO has become easier with greater economies of scale achievable with far better communication, shipping networks, and generally global connectivity. If CEO's of today on average leading companies that are orders of magnitude larger than in the 70's (CEO has 100-1000 people in the company in 70's vs 1,000-100,000 today), then the jump in pay isn't surprising. If the CEO is driving the direction of a company and those decisions affect orders of magnitude more workers and orders of magnitude more revenue, then it follows that they can get a higher salary. They might not be any better, but the stakes of their decisions are bigger.