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Will, I don't think there is any CEO out there who cuts little people's salaries for the purpose of freeing up money so he can buy a second yacht. That's a cartoon, that's not reality.
What's going on with CEO salaries is, as I said, similar to movie star or sports star salaries. There are a tiny number of people who are qualified for them and the competition to attract the talent is intense. It's a high-risk, high reward job, and there are lots of flameouts. I'm really amazed at why people find this to be so mysterious. The rewards of being at the very top of one's game are enormous relative to the second tier - and this is true not just for CEOs but for any similar kind of endeavor where the talent pool is shallow and the stakes are high. If CEOs were easy to replace they would be a lot less expensive. But they're not.
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