Think about it, CEO pay is determined by the company board. Those boards are made up of people who are often CEOs or former CEOs (look at the board of Apple for example 6 of 7 are CEO's or former CEOs) In other words you have a situation where a relatively small group of people are determining their own pay.

What do you think would happen to engineer pay if compensation were determined by a vote of a group of peers and you knew that the person who's pay you were voting on today might well be among the group of people determining your pay tomorrow. Personally I would always vote to increase pay by as large a number as I could possibly justify with a straight face.

That's a good point I hadn't thought about. So it's governed by game theory moreso than by market forces, i.e. even if candidate1 is not a great candidate, she's the best candidate available and we can get in our industry niche.

Perhaps a movement could be begun where companies use low ceo/worker multiplier as a marketing tool to highlight how pro-staff they are and by extension how pro-consumer they are.

I wonder why non-voting stock isn't more common, with a minimum number of people on the board being set if needed.

The question is, why didn't this happen before.

My 2 cents, the 80s is where automation truly started to take off, in the 90s, IT took over.

More work, less costs.