I had an idea the other day and want to post it. We're facing the greatest income inequality in human history right now
In recent history, yes. Human history, not even close. Consider peasants, slaves, serfs, etc. I'm not at all disagreeing that the inequality in pay isn't a problem, just clarifying.
and I was wondering if there might be a genuine (eventual) regulatory fix.
Here is my thought. Lock CEO pay to employee pay. Say, at 10 times employee pay. If a CEO wants a raise, he has to give his entire company a raise and he can never make more than ten times what his employees do. If he wants to be super-rich, he has to make his employees super-rich.
Feedback would be lovely.
This is a good idea in theory. But there are problems with it (see below).
Also, there is an assumption that when a CEO makes a million dollars a year, it's somehow taking away from the rest of the employees. At $50,000 per year (a professional average-ish salary) a company spends close to $75,000 a year when you include benefits, services, supplies, etc. $1,000,000 equals TWELVE employees. Your model is currently effectively in operation.
When someone's decisions make the difference in literally BILLIONS of dollars each year, I personally see it as fair that this person gets less than 1% of it as a commission to motivate them to continue that degree of success.
I think the biggest problem with million dollar salaries is honestly envy on the part of the rest of us who wish we were making more. I'll be one of the first to step up and say I'm envious of million dollar salaries for what looks to me to be a job that isn't that much more difficult than mine, but then my job isn't affecting BILLIONS of dollars in earning potential.
I like the idea of a system like that more than heavily taxing the rich. It seems kind of arbitrary and unfair to say "You make too much money so we're going to take a big chunk of it away." I'm sure that in the opinion of a lot of impoverished countries, the average American makes "too much money" anyway.
But it's safe to say that a CEO is making too much money when their employees are underpaid in comparison.
Agreed.
The most obvious problem with this idea is that it would strongly encourage companies to fire most of their regular employees and instead contract out to temp agencies to provide cheap workers who would receive far fewer benefits and almost no job security.
And I was going to post almost this exactly in response to the OP.
The reason people in power are in power is because they are willing to manipulate the system to their advantage, even when doing so harms others. Whatever system we put in place, without the will to do "what is right" and be helpful to others, people in power will not be. If they were, they wouldn't be in power long. That's the nature of power. It flows toward takers and away from givers.