http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OavsZltnktQ&feature=g-u-u

Average of $12million/year - I certainly wouldn't mind having that as my wage!

Do you feel that CEOs deserve the money that they get, or should there be a cap on their salary? Should they be taxed more? 

They should be paid equal to how useful they are to a company. If the CEO is bringing the company in a lot of money, he should be paid more.

And the difference between CEOs and regular workers are... a good CEO is often hard to come by. While anyone can be a worker

Quite good comparison there, TJ!

@OP: It wouldn't surprise me.

I don't have a problem with CEOs earning any amount as long as it is based on performance ...

If I was in charge of executive pay, I would give them a modest salary ($100,000 to $250,000 per year) with a substantial options package ($1,000,000 worth in shares to buy at current market value that mature in 5 years). Their earnings are (essentially) unbounded, if they're decent managers they will gain between $250,000 and $500,000 from their options, but if they do poorly they only get their base salary.

So long as they are taxed proportionately at least as much as the workers, I can deal with it. My chief economic irk at the moment is that they don't.

In what way are you talking about?

The taxes on both income and capital gains disproportionately tax those that earn more. Capital gains taxes (across all tax brackets) are lower taxes because increasing them would represent a form of double taxation which would be unfair. Wealthy people generally make their money from investments not salary and are therefore primarily pay capital gains tax.

If you don't think this is fair, the appropriate solution (in my mind) is to lower income taxes not to increase capital gains taxes.

He says that he's a capitalist, then lambasts companies in general for deciding how they pay their employees. Wut.

I think a bigger issue is that a CEO making 380 times as much as an honest worker can live a lifestyle 5 times as great as the honest worker's lifestyle, and then have 375 times as much as the honest worker's total income to invest and grow, increasing that 380 times to their total investments plus an additional 5-10% annually. So for example, within a few years a CEO could easily be making double his income through investments, but there really is no opportunity for the honest worker to invest enough to support a family on investments - even by retirement; in fact, judging by the way the world economy has been for the past 10-12 years, many people are likely to be in debt by retirement.

Well, it's their fault for being honest.

12 million for the ceo or not, if he would only get 1 million you could maybe give every worker one dollar more per month. it's not like every worker could get 500 bucks more if the ceo would get only 1 million... i really don't care about that, they handle billions of dollar why shouldn't they get some millions (if they don't ruin the company)? they give up a lot as well, they work from 8 to 8, come back to home and work few hours there...it's not as cool as some might think. there whole life is only work. and companies pay so  uch to get the best ceo's (what they think who the best are). if they woul pay half the amount they would have to chose another one who couldn't make so much money. and if he would make 5% less revenue than a better ceo, it would be 11 billion less revenue. which would be even worse for the employees. less revenue means less sales means less employees needed.

people who own some small companies with 50 employees are millionairs, why shouldn't someone with thousands of employees even if it's not his company get more than someone with this own company with 50-100 employees?