Annual-meeting season is unfolding for corporations, and the script is playing out as usual — chief executive officers will get their way. They may endure the verbal lashings of a couple of shareholders, perhaps face a slightly embarrassing “say on pay” vote about their princely income and then intone that after careful analysis, a compensation committee, advised by experts, unanimously approved their ridiculous pay package.

Extreme executive compensation is hardly a new issue — in the late 1970s General Motors executives were under fire for accepting $1 million paychecks while union workers were absorbing cutbacks. A Clinton-era law tried to pinch pay by limiting to $1 million the tax deduction companies could claim for the C.E.O.’s cash compensation. Boards responded by granting C.E.O.s more in stock and stock options.

That switch to equity-based pay is one reason chief executives have benefited disproportionately, with some now earning more than 1,000 times the median salary of their employees. According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, C.E.O. payouts rose about 1,000 percent between 1978 and 2017 in 2017 dollars. The Standard & Poor’s 500, by contrast, rose 637 percent, while the typical worker’s salary increased all of 11. 2 percent. The average American worker’s wages were flat in real terms from 2000 through 2018 before picking up this year.

The extravagance of C.E.O. pay surfaced anew when Abigail Disney, granddaughter of the Walt Disney Company co-founder Roy Disney, called Bob Iger’s $65 million compensation “insane.” She then criticized the company for bragging, in its response to her, that it paid theme park workers a minimum of $15 an hour — twice the federal minimum. Big deal, she countered. “Cast members” still struggle to make ends meet while Mr. Iger is earning 1,424 times the median employee pay. This is the same Scrooge McDisney company that in 201 5 imported lower-paid foreign workers on special visas to replace the local technical staff in Orlando, Fla., — and compelled the fired workers to train their own replacements.