The CEO got a huge raise. You didn't. Here's why.

Nah, blame yourselves.

'Blame the Robots' is correct, I work in IT and when the Economy is bad we get busy adding more than the usual level of automation to replace human workers.

Some projects I worked on caused a big numbers of employees to be 'let go' as their work became automated.

One BIG reason these CEOs are raking it in that the article didn't mention is the FEDs unnaturally low interest rates.

How is this connected?

It works like this:

1) Companies borrow money at close to zero interest.

2) They buy back a lot of their shares with that money.

3) This DECREASES the amount of shares publicly available

4) This INCREASES the EPS (Earnings Per Share) Since there are less shares with the same earnings

5) This boosts the stock price

6) CEO says "Look at me, I'm doing such a good job that the stock keeps going up! Give me a raise"

7) Clueless, yet happy shareholders say, "OK!"

8) Rinse repeat, every quarter, every year, etc.

Eliminating taxes would just create an anarchy. Just make taxation fair.

This really only applies to America, CEO's in Japan are not paid that much more than another else, and are more like cheer leaders (quote from JapanToday).

@gogogo - My sentiments exactly!

@gaijinfo couldn't have said it better myself... and on top of it all, of course, lets not forget there's 5 main ways a CEO rakes it in: Signing Bonuses, Base Salary, Seasonal/Performance Bonuses, Equity, and the big one Severance/Buyout/Retirement packages, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_compensation_in_the_United_States#Severance.2Fbuyout.2Fretirement_compensation

pointofview I am with you on that, sick of low pay then upskill, retrain, get smarter, come up with some innovation, why should the burger flipper be paid as much as the guy who trained to be an engineer?

I feel that the amount of income is in relation to your smarts and skill level.

But just because you went to university doesn't mean automatically you'll be paid well, I know some real dumb mutts with degrees, just is they knew how to remember stuff they had read when the exams came along. That does not equal smarts.

Most of the real smart people never went to university.

Jonobugs, yes. I like the idea France had of taxing the companies paying more than $1 million to executives, effectively not taxing the individuals (though their max rate is 75%, which is very detrimental to the country's economy), but not letting 100% of salary above that amount be a 100% expense to the corporation. This seems like a good idea to me. Pay what you want, but above $1 million or whatever, there will be a payroll surcharge (or whatever you want to call it) to the corporation in addition to what the individual actually receiving the money pays. Make sure this applies to the value of stock as well as actual money.

The solution to the wage problem is to eliminate all taxation, since taxes eat up to 92% of an American's livelihood. Instead of living hand to mouth on $100K a year, live well on $8K a year and don't pay any taxes.