Robert Reich's suggestion that the best (and perhaps only) way to achieve sanity in CEO compensation is to increase the marginal tax rate on extremely high compensation, has a major flaw. Unfortunately, corporations will then simply raise compensation even more to allow for the increased tax rate. To prevent such "end runs" the marginal tax rate needs to increase exponentially above a certain level, say $1 m. As compensation rises above this, the tax rate needs to increase so much, that such further increases in compensation become unproductive.

It needs to be combined with an IRS limit on what can be expensed and dedected from the corporate balance sheet and the CEO's salary must be booked and expensed on a cash basis. No carrying forward, no spreading payments to future periods (years)