In Japan, the highest-paid executive earns only fifteen times what the average worker does. Here, CEOs earn five hundred times more, but that's supposed to motivate the American worker. To do what, kidnap his boss?

The remark satirizes the idea—common in some pro-market rhetoric—that extreme executive pay is socially beneficial because it “motivates” workers through aspiration. By contrasting a relatively compressed pay ratio in Japan with a vastly larger U.S. CEO-to-worker gap, the speaker implies that such inequality is more likely to breed resentment than inspiration. The punchline (“To do what, kidnap his boss?”) pushes the logic to absurdity, suggesting that when the distance between worker and executive becomes implausibly large, the only “motivation” left is anger or fantasies of retaliation rather than productive ambition. It functions as a critique of corporate governance and the moral economy of compensation.