Holy shit. You spent too much time explaining to me what I already understand.

> CEOs already have lots of capital and prefer stocks to cash because it's taxed less. Plus already being rich means they can borrow against their assets to avoid most taxes.

That's the reason why CEOs are compensated with stocks. They already rich enough, so they can take more risk and get a better reward as result, which becomes a self sustaining feedback loop.

> A form of compensation that most workers would not want because they rather have cash to pay their bills.

As if CEOs don't have bills to pay. That's not the reason.