Locked behind a paywall, but I'll weigh in anyway. I did some quick calculations. I assume my company is representative of the general state of affairs elsewhere. Maybe I'm wrong, but whatever. The WSJ wants to talk about inequality within companies, so let's see exactly who is better off than who.
My company has greater than 200 people, positive cashflow, and products in the pipeline. The CEO of my company makes 136 times as much money as a median technical employee; these employees constitute the company's lifeblood and the company could not function in any capacity without them. They are paid slightly less than industry standard, though the other benefits and vacation package is industry standard.
The admin/HR/logistics people are the actual median in terms of frequency of people, and make 1/187th as much as the CEO. They are paid industry standard. The rest of the C-suite makes slightly less than the CEO, but similar; all of them make at least 100x as much as either median I've described, and there are of them total.
Seems like the cash is trapped at the very top at my firm, and probably most firms. Even a little redistribution would result in huge marginal gain for employees (2X) and little to no marginal loss for the leadership (-1/136th or whatever). I guess this harkens back to the old days when a CEO would "only" make 30x as much as a median employee. I'd prefer it if things were more like that.
