Well what is the purpose of this piece. The purpose of this piece is to play down how much more compensation CEOs get. It's basically a P/R piece to tell all the working classes that everything is fine, and the CEOs are being reigned in. So obviously some sarcasm is in order. But the picture is complicated, that on one hand CEOs are made to appear a certain way, as if they don't have privilege and are working harder than everyone else to deserve all that extra compensation. At the same time they do have much more privilege than any time in history, in terms of their compensation.
Another way of looking at it is that this is exactly how the shareholders want the situation to appear, in that CEOs are working hard for them, their bosses, and they don't mind paying for that hard work with extra compensation, which I guess is the exact dynamics of the situation.
Thank you for pointing this out and I agree. This is very much propaganda. Reigning in the total square footage of the executive wing at GE and replacing walnut with glass is just tokenism. No changes have been made to the outsized pay packages where a CEO will make 70 to 300 times what the average worker makes.
Boards have moved from investing (expecting a CEO to work for a decade or two improving the company) to speculating (betting that a new hotshot is going to bring big fast returns). The pay increases are an acknowledgement of that change, almost like hazard pay.
Another way of looking at it is that this is exactly how the shareholders want the situation to appear, in that CEOs are working hard for them, their bosses, and they don't mind paying for that hard work with extra compensation, which I guess is the exact dynamics of the situation.