Well, of course, a CEO's pay is indicative of what board considers as the CEO's contribution towards the bottomline/topline vs the contribution of all employees and when a CEO's pay is so much higher than that of other employees, it is in a sense, a statement that devalues the contribution of other employees.

Given that most boards are full of top-tier executives from other organizations, clearly it is in their narrow interests to favor high payouts to CEOs. But that is also indicative of a very high sense of entitlement and so the question is not - what should the ratio be? the question should really be - is the CEO really a team player? and does he/she value the team they have setup and if so how do they honour the team when the company does well and how will they as a team deal with a situation when there is a big downturn in the company?

I am not at all arguing for a socialist/communist type of mindset - but there is a point at which the sense of entitlement that CEOs feel that does damage to their own teams in ways that they don't realise. And I say this as someone who is a CEO.