It's impossible for all firms to pay their CEOs above the median salary - by definition, half of executives must be paid below the median. If the majority of firms adopt a compensation policy like the Bell Canada Enterprises one quoted above, CEO salaries will increase inexorably. At the same time, allowing firms to bring in temporary workers at less than the prevailing market wage prevents the price of labour from being bid up in response to labour shortages, dampening salary growth for workers at the lower wage end of the labour market.What I found interesting was not just the argument, but rather what happened in the comments. People focused on the second piece of the argument (temporary workers at below mean wages) and whether the sense of justice should be local or global. Consider Mike Moffat:
The inequality discussion changes a great deal if you consider the effects it has on Canadian inequality vs. global inequality. Why should the former necessarily be the lens we use to look at this problem? \The question here is why is the focus on workers and not on CEOs? I am a big fan of flexible immigration policies and I celebrate them. But I wonder if a temporary workers program (at below market wages) isn't just a half-way measure. Why not have permanent workers who have full rights to switch jobs?
I am not sure that removing the best and brightest from the third world is always a good plan, but if we are going to do it then why not make it easy for them to stand as equals in the society they are helping to build?
