They get paid with stock options which taxes aren't paid on until they are sold. The entire tax structure needs changed.

I don't know how much I'd be making a year if my income was calculated the way some CEO's "salaries" (i.e., compensation packages) were.

They get stock options (not something I get, to be sure). But their health benefits are included, while my employer's contribution isn't. Their retirement compensation is included, while my retirement benefits aren't. I continue to be amazed, nonetheless, in my federal income tax rate: it's routinely < 6%, between tax deductions, income deductions, and income that is just non-taxable or sheltered because of pre-tax health contributions or retirement contributions. And, no, I don't pay FICA taxes, just Medicare; I'm in a state-run DCP.

I suspect that this would move me from near median income to very close to the top 20%, and would move my family's income from near the top 20% into the top 10%. Then again, it would affect millions of people so the entire ranking system would need rejiggering and, for all I know, I'd wind up barely in the top 60%.

At the same time, a lot of CEOs have boom-and-bust periods. They get huge incomes, then are dropped and it takes them 6-8 months or longer of pretty much no income to find another job. Now, before somebody accuses me of sympathy (since non-condemnation = praise around here, where "you're with us or against us" is derided in others but lauded in ourselves), those people can easily afford it. The point is that it alters the numbers, so that the top ______% often changes considerably from year to year. (In other words, there's a lot of upward and downward mobility on some social strata. The media focus on the mobility from the bottom 10% to the top 5%, which is, I think, a fairly silly metric.)

to be analyzed. How much of our tax dollars go right to the 1% in the first place?