It’s possible to measure. Perhaps not to an extremely high confidence value, but it’s absurd to say an upper and lower bound of these ratios could not be determined. Just call Lloyd’s of London if you don’t believe me. If it can be insured, it can be analyzed sufficiently so these numbers exist and have some errors bars on them.
So now we know just now underpaid/overpaid Zuckerberg and our high level employee are. For a thought exercise, what do you think the employees would do with this information? HR departments? Boards of Directors? CEOs? Angel investors? Wealth management advisors? Loan risk quants? Four star generals? Party and national leaders?
Some of these may not care if they knew, or would be too busy to care. I think others already have an understanding of these kinds of numbers and relations due to specific domain knowledge or demographic knowledge; aptitudes which make one suited for a given job may also make one especially clever or capable. In any case, the effect of this knowledge varies.
I didn’t say that ratio had anything to do with fairness or equality. I think that was something you assumed or imputed into my statement.
Insurance companies in many jurisdictions are regulated to prevent excess profits. That’s why car insurance companies are sending refund checks; they’re legally obligated to pass on the savings if it costs them less to provide insurance to you. Why is it absurd then to ask for pay commensurate with profits? They call them points in Hollywood movie contracts[1]; they may have other names in other fields.
Perhaps companies over a certain value should be required by law or charter to give employees a choice to receive their regular pay as:
1) x% of value generation relative to other employees in the company as assessed by the people in the company and outside data;
2) y% of value generation relative to any other measure, such as company stock or inflation;
3) z, their inflation adjusted prior pay period payment; or
4) the same payment as they received last pay period;
whichever is greater, or whichever the employee chooses.
Would that be fair to the company? Why or why not? Would that be fair to workers? Seems hard to say how it would be unfair, unless you are a low value, replaceable worker. Is it ideal? Is it even workable? Would employees like having choice and knowledge better than the alternative? Would they like it better than the current status quo? In the interest of market transparency and maximal agency of market actors, which side is the hand of the market on?
Some of these questions can be analyzed by looking at worker-owned co-ops and companies.
[1] http://www.hollywoodlexicon.com/points.html