How much money should executives of a failing tech company stand to take home as severance?

At Yahoo, the answer is $89.2 million, according to proxy filings. From USA Today:

"[CEO Marissa] Mayer could take home a whopping $44 million after her four-year stint as CEO; Goldman, $12.2 million. Chief Revenue Officer Lisa Utzschneider could make a $20.5 million soft-landing, and General Counsel Ronald S. Bell, $12.4 million. Co-founder David Filo, a board member who sports the title of "chief Yahoo", can look forward to a relatively modest padding of $65,742."

Those numbers represent what's called "golden parachute compensation," or severance packages allotted for executives who face a "qualifying termination" in connection with a sale of the company and change in command. Yahoo is slated to sell its core assets to Verizon for $4.8 billion.

The compensation outlined is "based on multiple assumptions that may or may not actually occur or be accurate on the relevant date," and is therefore subject to change, according to the proxy statement.

Reporting and speculation on Mayer's potential compensation has spurred conversation and debate generally about executive conversation and income inequality.

Yahoo reported in April that Mayer stood to collect $55 million in the event of a sale, a figure that caused some shock when the Yahoo-Verizon deal was announced. Fortune reported in July that by an alternative calculation, Mayer could reap as much as $123 million. Yahoo disputed the calculation, saying in a statement it was based on "questionable assumptions and formulas to make grossly misleading and inaccurate estimates of our CEO's compensation. As we explained to the reporter before he published the piece, it is misrepresentation to classify equity Mayer previously vested in over four years at the company as a 'payout' from an acquisition."

Whether accurate or misleading, the higher estimate crept across Twitter over the course of the week of July 26 when the story ran, drawing outrage among observers already critical of Mayer's tenure at Yahoo.

Some felt Mayer's potential severance reflected larger trends in the national economy:

Board/CEO backroom deals to fleece shareholders undermine faith in markets and are ground zero for income inequality https://t.co/8EgCHMP8O2 -- Scott Galloway (@profgalloway) July 28, 2016

Marissa Mayer made $200m-$300m in 4 yrs @ Yahoo. No surprise people angry & supporting Sanders/Trump. @profgalloway https://t.co/dMDEYbDpsD -- Peter Abraham (@PeterAbraham) July 28, 2016

Hedge fund manager Eric Jackson, dubbed "Yahoo's Loudest Critic" by Time magazine, said in July that Mayer stood to benefit from increases in value of Yahoo's stock due to factors her management had nothing to do with.

"Yahoo's core business seems to have gone down in value while she was CEO but its stock went up because its 2005 investment in Alibaba went up in value," he told Inc. in a July email exchange about Fortune's reporting.