News that the pay of FTSE 100 chief executives rose by 12% last year reminds us that the bosses' pay con-trick is still working well.

A couple of recent papers corroborate my view that it is indeed a con.

First, Thomas Lambert and Eundak Kwon show that movements in top US incomes since 1929 are correlated with both the political environment - "neoloiberalism" favouring high pay - and with the rate of surplus value, defined as the ratio of non-wage incomes to the wages of "productive" workers.They say:

The Marxian concept of the rate of exploitation appears to have some statistical validity.

Secondly, Olivier Fournout describes how the description of the CEO as hero in many management books resembles the depiction of heroes in many films. In both, our hero assumes a role, is reasonable, sensitive and listening, and unorthodox and creative - and takes risks. He writes:

The figure of the hero promoted by management literature and the American film industry is'at a structural level'the same.

This, of course, shows how the position of the boss is sustained by an ideological construct; the pretence that the boss is like a Hollywood hero serves to legitimate his role and his huge salary, just as stories of medieval chivalry helped to legitmate robber barons.

You might object here by pointing to work by Brian Bell and John van Reenan, which finds a strong correlation in recent years between UK CEO pay and performance: