Well we finally agree on something Craig.
CEO and senior exec/board salaries/compensation are WAY out of line with traditional multiples of "worth" and with the rest of the world. Boards are interlocking,cronyism abounds, CEO's play musical chairs and there is unchecked personal greed that focuses on quarterly profits to enhance personal stock option grants...at the expense of the long term health of the company and employees and society. The PUBLIC corporation that is permitted to exist here and benefit from our laws and freedoms has not ONLY an obligation to shareholders, but one to its' employees and society as well.
CEO salaries at Fortune 500 in the 1960's averaged about 60 times the salary of their average employees. Today it is roughly 350 times higher (and that is down a bit from the REAL CEO heyday a few years back.)
I do not want to put a specific monetary limit on compensation but think instead that a generous MULTIPLE of average salary should be instituted...let's say 100 times AVERAGE EARNINGS (including benefits). Even a CEO with a 20K average company wage could earn a measly $2million this way...but the incentive would be to raise ALL wages. If your workers earned 40K a year...you could make $4million.
Wanna run up the stock price? Fine...give each employee 1/100th of what the CEO gets to make it happen and the WHOLE company will be focused on maximizing shareholder value.
My guess is the quality of CEO's would not diminish...nor would the available talent pool. After all...where else are they gonna go to earn that much if they can't throw a left handed curve ball?
What would change is the cronyism and the greed at the expense of workers and society as a whole.
Not very conservative of me...but this is ONE area where I part company with unrestrained capitalism.