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Short answer? Yes, corporate executives are ripping us off.
Longer answer? CEO compensation was roughly 42x average worker pay as recently as 1980, but it skyrocketed in the 1980s and 1990s all the way up to around 525x, peaking just before 9/11. It's still something like 270x. And that likely doesn't include bonuses and other perks. There's this strange line that's given every time excessive executive pay is discussed, that somehow these outrageous numbers are justified in that these individuals are uniquely talented and corporations have to compete over these supermen, these John Galts. In reality, current CEOs aren't somehow 6.5 times as effective as they were in 1980, and really there's very little evidence to suggest exorbitant salaries produce better results in management or workers (though it can with manual laborers). In the end, these salaries, along with financial fraud and schemes, are largely responsible for the moving of wealth from the many to the few. It's a bubble that's either going to burst resulting in will-manage-for-food CEOs or a violent revolution.
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