You've presented citations that 'CEO pay is bad'. This is probably in line with your leftist ideology and little more than showing your confirmation bias.
Or, it's a recognition that it's bad for an economy and a society when the top earners reward themselves, and capture all the gains, and arrange for their taxes to get cut over and over, while everyone else gets screwed.
COEs, and other C-Levels, are also in a job market, one that has a scarcity of supply of good ones, leading to corporations to compete for the good ones, resulting in the large compensation packages.
Bwahaha.... No.
CEOs started pushing up their own pay in the 1970s, and the wealthy started pushing to cut their taxes in the Reagan years. In 1978, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio was around 30:1; today, it is closer to
300:1.
That change in pay didn't happen because there was a massive shortage of CEOs starting in the Reagan years; I assure you, for every current CEO, there are 100 people dying to take the job at a lower compensation. It also didn't happen because there was a massive increase in available labor. No, it's that corporate culture shifted away from a more responsible mentality, to one of satisfying short-term shareholders. Attempts to rein in CEO pay (notably CEO pay disclosure rules) wound up backfiring, as it gave the CEOs an excuse to demand higher pay by comparing to other executives.
The obvious answer is to undo the Trump Tax Boondoggle, and return to higher top marginal tax rates, as well as eliminate tax cuts and loopholes for the wealthy (like lower capital gains taxes and the carried interest loophole), and make education more affordable for the 99%.
In spite of leftists belief they can empower the government (some would say over empower), there's no thwarting a free market short of destroying it completely, and making everything far worse as a result.
Bwahaha.... No.
The US has never had the kind of radical laissez-faire economy that makes you drool. Federal, state and municipal governments have intervened in markets for centuries. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but the idea that "any attempt to introduce equity into a free market results in utter destruction" is
laughable.
If leftists really cared about the 'American middle class' and their compensation, they wouldn't be promoting policies that import so much competing labor resources, nor regulate the economy and corporations to the point of strangulation, which depresses labor demand and therefore hurts that same middle class US citizens.
Yaay, more libertarian bull****
1) Immigrants don't steal middle class jobs. In fact, they are good for an economy, and generate economic activity. They rent homes, they buy food and beverages and clothes, they keep the cost of goods and services down, and many do low-wage work that native-born Americans don't want to do at those wages. There's tons of research backing this.
I might add that a true libertarian
should be totally fine with a free market in labor. If an immigrant is willing to work for less than someone else, why should the government interfere? Hmmmmm.
2) In a lot of cases, you can either hire the immigrant in the US, or you can move the production to a foreign nation, or the job can be automated out of existence. Take your pick.
3) No, the US isn't strangling companies with regulations -- as should be obvious by the high level of entrepreneurship and manufacturing (yep, that's right, the US is at record levels of manufacturing output these days, we just don't need humans to make stuff), as well as incredibly high productivity in states that engage in regulation (notably California and New York). We also
don't see the middle class booming in many low-regulation states like Louisiana or Kansas.
Appears the US middle class citizens have caught on to this bull**** from the Democrats, as their voting for Democrats appears to have fallen off, the ginned up TDS hatred not withstanding (yes, I'm honest enough to admit that this does have an impact).
Or, not.
1) In case you missed it, Democrats won the Presidency in 2008 and 2012.
2) In case you missed it, Clinton won nearly 3 million more votes than Trump in 2016.
3) In case you missed it, Democrats
spanked Republicans in 2018. They swept the House, they took control of numerous governorships, they would have a majority in the Senate if the map wasn't so heavily tilted to Republicans that year. A lot of the gains were in, wait for it... middle-class suburbs.
4) In case you missed it, the Republicans haven't done jack for the middle class. Their primary goal is to slash taxes for the wealthy, and rig the system in favor of the corporate and ultra-wealthy contributors.