MARK J. PERRY: The average US CEO last year made only $178,400 (about the same as a dentist), and got a raise of less than 1%. “Discussions about ‘excessive CEO pay’ are distorted by looking at only an outlier group of the 200 CEOs of America’s largest companies, out of 248,760 chief executives nationwide. Of course, many young, risk-taking CEOs are running early stage startups and tech companies, and probably make even less than the average CEO as reported by the BLS.”