An Insider's Take on Corporate America's Decline

At least once a year I trek to Blacksburg, Virginia, where I grew up and some family still resides. I make a point of visiting a friend from my parent's church who retired to Blacksburg in the 1990s. He served in WWII, helping perform autopsies for the Army Medical Corp. After the war, he went to college on the GI Bill and became a chemical engineer.
He was a pioneer in computer programming for oil refineries, using emerging technologies to modernize the way refineries produced oil and other petroleum products. He recalled that in the 1940s and 1950s the CEOs of the giant oil companies (he worked for two in his career) were gentlemen who treated their employees with dignity and respect. They also didn't make outrageous salaries or bonuses.

In the 1960s, he remarked that the CEOs started coming from Ivy League business schools (rather than working their way up the ladder in the industry). They were primarily lawyers and accountants.
In his own inimitable style (he's from Texas) he called them a 'bunch of bastards' that didn't know anything about how to run a refinery. They were only interested in making money. By the time he retired in the 1990s, he considered the oil industry hopelessly inept and stupidly managed. He has especially harsh words for BP, a company that had been cutting corners and ignoring the advice of engineers for decades.
The statistics bear out his personal experience.
At the beginning of the 1960s, average CEO pay was 10-11 times that of the average worker. During the Bush administration, 2000-2008, it rose to 319 times. The Bush family oil companies are a good example of competently run businesses in the 40s and 50s ruined by an Ivy Leaguer coming out in the 1960s.
My friend worked directly with vice presidents and CEOs. He had insider's knowledge. I take his perspective seriously. It is more informed and more knowledgeable than what you will find in the media, where bobble-head dolls mouth talking points and play cutesy with each other.
I encourage people to seek out those in this generation (those who started working in the 40s) and ask them what changes they have seen in their lifetimes. It's chilling. What kind of stories will we be telling in 30 years? Will we be proud of this generation of CEOs? Don't think so. They're a 'bunch of bastards.'