Though I have known business owners who have made less than their employees at times, it's always been small 2-10 person businesses, and in a hard time when the owner was trying to weather the hard times with their own equity (ie paying the company to keep people employed). But that's only a small amount of time, and never a business that the majority of people in the county knew the name.

As for businesses with shareholders. Hell no. Never would happen.

I've had one supervisor in a large enterprise company make less than me - and they were damn good at their job. I was also told at another job I applied for (different firm) that I couldn't realistically request to make more than the manager.

Business owner here who's best employees earn at least as much as me: an often overlooked fact is the risk of invested time without equal payout for founding a business and ally the time until it eventually all works out.

All the employees at my age bracket already bought a house, and although my business starts working out now, after 10 years invested, my kids don't play in their own yard yet.

We need people creating ethical business and they need to earn quite a lot more money after all that first to catch up money wise and then to justify the risk. Of founding at all.

Most employees forget that for all their economic security there was somebody before them taking the risk and pay cuts to make that a possibility. Which is understandable, but sometimes a little sad. :/