The issue goes way beyond the 60-1 ratio as cliff points out. Apart from the ratio, I'm willing to bet that the salary (non options) is greater every year too !!! (on average). The proliferation of stock options is just gravy that is out of control. In fact, because of that, the 60-1 is even more dangerous than it might otherwise be. If you had a salary of $100,000 a year and you never got a pay raise and you started selling more stock than buying, that might not be good. But, how much worse is it if you are now making a salary of $500,000 a year and you are selling an increasingly higher number of stocks over what you are buying?
Executive pay and compensation is increasing at alarming levels even when overall earnings of companies pale in comparison, or even when they lose money, or even when they have increasingly larger losses.
The systemic problems in the executive boardrooms are rampant and dangerous - even fatal to a long sustained bull market. This looting of the average American's pocketbook has contributed greatly to the increasing disparity between rich and poor. It is now at the greatest disparity since 1929. There are dozens of articles on this issue. Here is one. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5726153
Typically, huge disparities between rich and poor have been directly linked to the third world. The more first world the economy, the less the disparity (on average), but the United States is quickly drifting back the opposite direction. Coupled with numerous other issues that have to do with debt, deficits, smoke and mirror financial accounting schemes, fractional reserve banking, etc, this rapidly increasing disparity between rich and poor could be one of the first signs of a great society in permanent decline.
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