C'mon now you can do better than that. We deserve better than that, every argument you've ever gotten here has been good-faith. It's patronizing to argue that Starbuck's employees don't like having free Spotify as if every other similar job has no benefits at all. Dick's Drive-in, an equally-old, equally-Seattle company, offers health insurance, tuition and a child care allowance. Dick's, of course, has eight locations instead of 34k, despite being 15 years older. A legitimate debate would be about how that's not related to shareholder value and unfettered capitalism. As to Lyra Health - have you experienced it? I've got some secret camera footage here:

Likewise, comparing Starbuck's to GE is disingenuous to the point of fatuousness. You're making median/mean arguments as if "average" discussions aren't designed to mask inequality. You didn't even break it up by the incredibly vague "consumer discretionary" category, in which it is revealed that Starbuck's is more unequal, on average, than Dollar General, Papa John's, Six Flags, Norwegian Cruise Lines or Target - the only food service companies with worse equality are Yum! Brands and Aramark, two of the most legendarily shitty companies to work for in the United States.

The whole argument here, as you know, is that top-heavy companies are bad for workers... so gambits to bring in shareholders are only ever going to fall flat. But you know what, for the sake of argument, let's look at what the shareholders want.

A cursory examination of the issue would reveal that executive pay has been increasing at pretty much the rate that dividends have been decreasing. Even from a John Galt standpoint, CEO largesse is bad for shareholder value.

But none of this illuminates the real issue.

Fundamentally, the game being played is not the one whose rules have been published. By inspection, a loose consortium of 34,000 coffee shops don't need a CEO or a board. What needs the overhead is the brand, and the reason to build brand is to maintain share price. Much like your trumpeting of Howard Shultz's "compensation". The man owns 20m shares; arguing that his salary is relevant is like pretending Elon Musk is an altruist because Tesla doesn't give him a W2.

You aren't even trying in good faith to argue around the margins of the issue. Do better.