Do you think we should have a maximum wage for publicly traded companies?

There are plenty of excellent reasons for not allowing companies to become "too big to fail" besides overpaid CEOs, but that's another rant.

I, personally, don't support the idea of a maximum wage because I think that companies should be able to offer what they think they need to offer in order to attract the best talent available to them.

Frequently, the CEOs making the most money are the ones running failing corporations. Seems unjustifiable at first, but shouldn't a CEO working 80 hours a week to turn around a hot mess make more than someone who can turn big profits without breaking a sweat?

Also, you have to consider that the bulk of CEO's earnings are usually bonuses based on performance and unrealized capital gains from stock options that come largely from the increased value that their leadership caused.

Even when companies are tanking and CEOs are taking home multi-million dollar bonuses, it may be the judgment of the board of directors that their CEO is still the right man for the job and big bonuses may be what it takes to keep him from seeking greener pastures. And it's worthwhile to ask whether the company's poor performance is really the CEO's fault. Did buggy-whip factories fail because of poor management?

Ultimately it is the board of directors who sets the salary for the CEO and other top executives, and they are elected by shareholders, which seems fair to me. The tragedy is that shareholders tend to look for short-term stock gains rather than long-term viability, and to that end, they get what they pay for.