CEO's Salary

My friend complains about CEOs who get paid too much. He laments, how can someone possibly earn 500 million a year? This stems from his liberal bend that believes that the bosses exploit the workers.

I'd certainly like that CEO job (the pay, not the responsibility), though I think it probably includes golf and ties, neither of which are my cup of tea.

I give him the same arguments each time:

1) Leadership is both a rare talent and a grueling task, and anyone who can do it is worth their weight in gold.

2) The stockholders should complain if their company is wasting money by paying more than they should (and need to) for leadership. Or they should sell their stock.

and

3) The alternative, that the government sets limits, has so many problems and is so contrary to a free society, that we should not touch that with a ten foot pole.

And I ask him how he'd solve the problem, to which he says that he doesn't know. He just says that it is wrong, obscene, and that justice will not come from the stockholders cries because the world is so corrupt and all these CEOs sit on each other boards.

One could say that anyone, like Atlas, willing to put the weight of the world on their shoulders, is deserving of such great compensation. Or perhaps that the solution might cause more problems than the problem.