There is no limit to what CEO’s can be worth, as there is no limit to how much value can be created by unusually insightful leadership. When a good CEO is paid well, they are only keeping a fraction of the value they guided into existence.

As our society becomes more knowledge intensive, the amount of value created by leadership, as apposed to raw materials and labor, is growing. This means the value of CEOs will keep going up.

There is no limit to what a CEO can be worth, as there is no limit to the amount of value that can be created by great leadership. “Saving” money by paying a CEO less is false economy as even a fraction of a percent less growth will wipe out that savings many times over. There is no sane reason to not pay a very high performing CEO a perceptible fraction of the growth they oversee.

Contrary to the opinion of people who don’t understand that most economic value is created by the proper combination of raw materials and raw labor, not simply the materials and labor by themselves, paying someone highly does not mean taking anything from anyone else.

Now, I’m not supporting cronyism and favoritism among a Board of Directors and their CEO (like Enron or even Congress voting themselves pay raises and other perks I don’t even know about — as elected officials). However, I do disagree with those of you who think it’s “morally wrong” for a CEO to earn more than a certain multiple figure above the salary of “one of his assemblers.” Not all of us can be CEOs. Not all of us may even want to be CEOs! For those of us that do, however, striving to work one’s way up the ranks of a company is what one should aspire for if that is their goal and NOT begrudge the higher-ups in a company for their success.

Tim Cook could easily be replaced by another able user-advocate, product-centric manager from within (Jony Ive?) at a fraction of the current bloated compensation and Apple would retain its value for both user and investor.

The only brilliant unexpected leadership praise-worthy move that Cook has made thus far is that he has resisted the short-outlook Wall Street demands for Apple to play obvious stock manipulation games via buybacks, splits, or excessive dividends. Apple should be distancing itself from the gambling den, not embracing it.

Now, he needs to find a good person to run Retail, kick Samsung out of Apple tech and introduce some killer tech (hardware/software) which shows the rest of the industry what they need to copy.

Increase in CEO annual compensation from 1978 to 2011 — 726.7%

He was offered stock options worth $70 million a year ago when he became CEO… half of which he can take in five years, the other half in ten years. As of this moment, it’s only on paper, he does not have access to this stock to “cash” it in. It is an incentive to keep him around for that period of time.