Why CEOs Are Wildly Overpaid, In One Chart

This chart offers a pretty compelling argument for why CEOs are making way too much money compared to what their employees earn.

Pulled from a Harvard Business School survey, it shows how people in 16 countries feel about the disparity between the amount of money CEOs make and what the average worker pulls in.

The gray part represents the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay in each of the countries (in the US, it's 354:1). The red area is what respondents think the ratio is where they live (Americans thought CEOs make 30 times more money than the average unskilled worker).

That tiny blue space? That's the ratio people said would be ideal (Americans said they'd like it to be 7:1).

As you can see, the estimated difference between CEO pay and worker pay is much bigger than what people would like, and even that disparity is dwarfed by the level of inequality that actually exists.