I am generally skeptical of these 400 to 1 claims. Often consideration in executive pay are incentives and stock options, not just a straight salary. If the stock goes way up, then yes, that can result in a big pay day. I do not spend much time worrying that some executive at some company may be getting paid too much anymore than I worry that certain basketball players or reality TV actors are overpaid. I have little use for Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, or Kim Kardashian or Kanye West. But if they make a lot of money, I don’t begrudge them for that. Do we really want to go back to all of the policies of the 1950s, including 90% top tax rates? I certainly hope not. I am skeptical of ALL policies which raise taxes and increase the size the size of government. These policies end up hurting the little guy the hardest. The rich will always find ways to protect their assets.
If you have not already done so, I hope you will see The Big Short. Back when all the banks went bust, I did a fair amount of research on those banks. It turned out that the CEO’s salary at Countrywide went down from $140 million to a mere $100 million from 2007 to 2008. I don’t have my notes in front of me, but I believe the salaries of CEO’s at Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs went from the $40 to over $70 million area. Lehman Brothers at the time that happened was trying to get a rescue from British banks. The received the big NO and went belly up. Goldman Sachs, of course, had an in at the White House and survived. One reason, I heard, for increasing these already obscene salaries was that their stock options had gone down in value. In 2008 the stockholders rebelled and 43% voted for a provision to include a stockholder advisory on executive compensation. Stockholders need to do a whole lot more rebelling.
More recently, the CEO of Walmart was making around $20 million, while low level workers were making $9 an hour and having reduced hours so they were not eligible for full time benefits. Even if you consider $9 an hour, 40 hours a week, for 52 weeks that is only $18,720 (less SS and taxes). $20 million divided by $18,720 = 1068 to 1.
For more information just Google a corporation name and CEO or executive compensation, and a year if you want. Forbes used to have a really good listing of CEO compensation each year by industry category. Then in I think 2010 they changed that and made it a lot harder to track industry salary trends. At any rate, here is one link commenting on the disparity of CEO wage increases versus worker wage increases.