It's really a matter of perspective:
Let's say the average U.S. salary is $50,000 per year. Let's say an executive earns $1,000.000 per year. The executive's salary is equivalent to 20 (twenty) time more than the average salary or 20 years worth of an average worker's effort. What did the the executive do that is worth 20 years of an average worker's annual salary? Now take an executive earning $10,000,000 per year; this is equivalent to 200 (two hundred) year's woth of an average worker's annual salary. Did ths executive do somethig in that one year that is worth 200 times the average worker's effort or 10 time the first excutives effort?
There was a time when major corporations were helmed by the people who actually built their companies fom the ground up (Ford, Edison, etc.) and probably deserved large salaries since they initially stuck their necks out and took the risk. Today, corporations are helmed by people who have taken really no risk (the 'golden parachute' sees to that) and are essentially caretakers, at best, or, at worst, seeking to merge or sell their corporations (with an eye to enriching themselves further) with little concren to who down the food chain will be affected or if jobs will be lost overseas. The example of sports figures large salaries is often brought up as a defense of large executive salaries, but I never heard of an executive having a career-ending injury while enjoying their steak-and-two-martini lunch.
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