And that's before the passage of President Bush's tax-cut plan, which would widen the advantage of the upper crust on an aftertax basis. To some extent, of course, top execs have prospered so much simply because they happened to have the right job at the right time. They benefited from a roaring New Economy stock market that for years defied logic and valued many companies at indefensibly high levels. Yet though Wall Street's woes continue, don't expect CEOs to share the pain of shareholders for long, Lawler says, or of the employees they're laying off. We'll see a return to cash and grants of restricted stock rather than options.
Restricted stock are outright grants of company stock, which guarantee some net income.
Stock options, which give a person the right to buy shares at a given price sometime in the future, can become worthless if the stock tanks. There's more to why execs earn so much than unbridled greed and compliant boards. After two decades of nearly uninterrupted economic expansion in the U.S., wealth is in vogue. The higher the score, the better. Only in the court of public opinion are such questions raised, often by gadflies whose impact is small.