No, but the drive to cash in with company stock is ruining the work lives of employees. This isn't the way it has always been, it's just what the corporate world has devolved too as bigger and bigger corporations employ a greater % of the workforce.
Jensen and Murphy were a pair of economists who studied CEO pay and wrote a paper on it in 1990. At the time most CEO's got a salary and a performance bonus. The bonus was usually a very small percentage of the increased performance. I can't remember and don't have the time to go look it up, but they got something like a 1% bonus for a 20% increase in the company's performance. Needless to say, there wasn't much of an incentive to really push the company upward and forward and there was a question of just exactly how much impact a CEO had on a company's performance, or more specifically, it's stock price.
There arose a debate between paying CEO's more or rewarding them for performance via stocks and stock options. We all know which side won.
If there is anyone to blame, it's the people who didn't want to give CEO's higher salaries and better bonuses a couple of decades or so ago.
And with the outsourcing of labor meaningful, well paid jobs are in short enough supply as is, so downsizing us to make a buck just magnifies the problem. It looks like it's time to legislate conditions for executive pay. Corporations are already regulated entities, subject to the oversight of the S.E.C. so I don't think it's a stretch to be able to regulate corporate officer compensation. Company execs are used to calling the shots but in a "one man, one vote" democracy our overwhelming numbers could force changes. If only our politicians weren't bought already.
I'll retort that the task of regulating an exec's pay lies with the stockholders and the board of his company. I don't think I should have any ability to force a CEO to take a pay cut any more than I think I should be able to force my neighbor to take one.