In 1994, Ben and Jerry's had a rule saying that the highest paid person should be 5x the lowest, which at that time the highest that could be paid was equal to $81,000 at the time in 1994, which is equal to $148,497 in today's dollars.

When hired, the new CEO, Robert Holland Jr. who was a partner at McKinsey, "submitted a job application in the form of a 32-line poem titled "Time, Values and Ice Cream," which summarized his life and mentioned that as a black youth he was barred from sitting in "Sullivans, the ice cream place on Main," in his childhood town of Albion, Mich." - New York Times.

"Mr. Holland will receive a basic salary of $250,000 ($458,326 in 2021 dollars), more than the socially concerned company has ever paid but not an unusually high salary for a food company of its size." - New York Times

So basically his compensation is 30x higher than the lowest salary of $16,200 ($29,699 in 2021 dollars). I did say 10x, but was not hard and fast on that number, I said "or whatever". I don't really have an issue with $460,000 in today's dollars, and being 30x the lowest paid worker.
But if he was to make today's average of 300x the lowest salary, which is average amount of compensation for CEOs, then Mr. Holland would be making $4,860,000 ($8,909,868 in 2021 dollars). That's obscene and grotesque. And it sure is not in the best interests of the shareholders, as seen in the next paragraphs.

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Innosight Company report.
"Furthermore, in 1965, the average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 was 33 years. By 1990, it was 20 years. It's forecast to shrink to 14 years by 2026. And about 50 percent of the S&P 500 will be replaced over the next 10 years, if Innosight's forecasted churn rate holds.

So my personal view is that CEO's don't matter that much. Sh-t, I'd be happy to run a company into the ground in 14 years, for $20,000,000 per year. Why not me? Because 14 years, that's the statistic, going to go out of business anyways, no matter who the CEO is. So why pay so much? Bad investment of shareholder's money.

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The problem is that there is so much CEO idolatry, it's not even funny.

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But instead of looking at Ben and Jerry's from 25 years ago, let's look at something newer. What about Dan Price at Gravity Payments?

Dan Price was paying his people standard payscale rates - administrative help at $16 per hour, etc. One person was a 32-year-old phone tech earning about $35,000 a year. The phone tech was pissed, as Price saw from his body language. Dan Price asked what was the matter, and the phone tech said that Dan Price was ripping him off. Price asked why he thought that, and the employee said, "I know your intentions are bad. You brag about how financially disciplined you are, but that just translates into me not making enough money to lead a decent life."

Price realized his employee was right -- not only about being underpaid, but also about Price's intentions. Dan price cut his own salary from $1.1 million to $70,000, and put the minimum wage for working at his company, no matter what the position, at $70,000. A high-powered 52-year-old Yahoo executive named Tammi Kroll, who was so inspired by Price that she quit her job and in September went to work for Gravity at what she insisted would be an 80-85 percent pay cut.

"I was so angry," Price says. "Here I am walking around making $1 million a year, and I'm working shoulder to shoulder with people ... who are every bit as good and valuable as I am."

Price says establishing a $70,000 minimum wage is a moral imperative, not a business strategy.

“6 years ago today I raised my company’s min wage to $70k,” Price tweeted. “Fox News called me a socialist whose employees would be on bread lines. Since then our revenue tripled, we’re a Harvard Business School case study & our employees had a 10x boom in homes bought.

The impact on Price's own life has been minimal, he said. For example, back when he raked in over a million dollars a year, he would go heli-skiing in British Columbia. Now he just goes regular skiing.

Price says a colleague at a competitor recently suggested to him that if Gravity adopted a more traditional business model, Price could become a billionaire and do a lot of good with that money.

"He's telling me that the world needs another billionaire philanthropist, and I just don't know if that's the case. Because we've been relying on billionaire philanthropists for so long, and I don't really think that's working out very well for us," he said.

The C-suite have showered themselves in compensation, but most Americans haven't had a raise, in real dollars, since 2000.

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Info from the Dodd-Frank bill, data from AFL-CIO (2017):

Weight Watchers International

CEO: Mindy Grossman

CEO pay: $33,372,283 (2017)

Median worker pay: $6,013

CEO/median worker pay ratio: 5,908:1

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Mattel

CEO: Margaret H. Georgiadis

CEO pay: $31,275,289 (2017)

Median worker pay: $6,271

CEO/median worker pay ratio: 4,987:1

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McDonald's Corporation

CEO: Stephen Easterbrook

CEO pay: $21,761,052 (2017)

Median worker pay: $7,017

CEO/median worker pay ratio: 3,101:1

In a 2017 article, Forbes asked "How Many Workers Must Live In Poverty For McDonald's CEO To Make $21.8 Million?"

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Gap

CEO: Arthur Peck

CEO pay: $15,587,186 (2017)

Median worker pay: $5,375

CEO/median worker pay ratio: 2,900:1

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F-ing immoral.

Did you all know that the top income tax rate was from 70% to 90% From the 1940s through the mid-1980s? Now it is like, 35%, but the wealthy can use all kinds of tricks to lower that down to nothing, because they bribe (aka lobby) Congress for that?

Did you know that the City of San Francisco was going to raise the city tax on the wealthiest citizens by 1%, in order to help solve the homeless crises, and they all started making noises about how they were going to leave SF, because of a stinking 1%?

F-ing immoral.

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I know that I wrote a lot, but it is something that I get pretty heated about. As you all can tell.