As long as we as a society allow this to happen, and even reward it, we can't really complain. My issue is with using stock price as an indicator of executive performance. The article mentions that in a world of bubbles, stock price is not always indicative, or even directly correlated to performance. I can attest to this after witnessing two giant bubbles pop. There are many more factors to look at with the health of a company than just appeasing shareholders (the majority of whom are often the executives and board members themselves!).
The gap widens because we allow it to widen while listening to media sound-bites as our new gospel. It will end when people want it to end, if they want it to end at all. There is plenty of union bashing going on, so maybe we are not ready to live in a world where executives don't make 62x the annual salary of workers in just bonuses alone? Not to say that unions are good or bad (I'm not in a union), but they can give power to workers in many cases.
Interesting article though. Thanks for posting it.
