Top executives agree they are overpaid

Warren Buffett has said that you should never ask a barber if you need a haircut. But if a barber tells you that you don't need a haircut, that probably means you really don't need one.

And while most people would agree that top executives at publicly traded companies are overpaid, we now have all the evidence we need to end this debate: They think they're overpaid too! A survey of 70 presidents and chief executives conducted by the National Association of Corporate Directors found that 2 out of 3 top executives thought chiefs were given high compensation relative to their performance. Only 2.2% thought the pay was too low!

It's time for corporate directors to be taken out to the woodshed. They have failed mightily in their duty to shareholders. They're supposed to be representing our interests, but instead serve as lapdogs, paying CEOs amounts of money that they themselves consider obscene!

Some have attempted to frame this as a populist issue, pointing to the fact that the gap between the rich and poor has reached its widest point in 60 years. But I'm more concerned about it as a corporate governance issue. Directors are pretty obviously wasting shareholders' resources on excessive compensation, and it needs to stop.