You are talking about compressing the dynamic range of a recording which can apply to analogue or digital recordings to achieve specific audio effects. This is totally different from compressing the data of a digital recording to save space.

With regard to the latter, readers may find this article informative:
http://www.techhive.com/article/64123/article.html
It is rather old but clearly demonstrates the points made above in support of mp3:
- it is a poor audio compression format if you use low bit rates
- it is one of the best if you use higher rates.

For those who can't be bothered to read the article:
* We then asked the testers to rate what they thought was the compressed file on a quality scale of 1 to 5
*When our testers rated what they guessed were compressed tracks, all of the formats scored above four at a bit rate of 128 kbps or higher. We were surprised that MP3 came out on top with a score of 4.9 at the highest bit rate of 256 kbps.
*For general use, 128 kbps is fine (or 192 kbps if you have really good ears).

That's compressing for a specific audio effect, CD's have a MUCH greater dynamic range than vinyl - vinyl is extremely limited, by the noise levels on quiet passages and not breaking through to the adjacent track on loud passages.

I can't comment on a specific MJ album, as I wouldn't want one as a gift

Last time I put a turntable on a test set I think I measured something like 45-50dB dynamic range on the test disk. Compared to something like 90-96dB on a CD.

Problem is from what I've seen recently a lot of CDs are being released with single figure dB dynamic range! God knows why.

I've compared some CDs I got god knows how many years ago with more recent re-mastered versions and the difference in subjective volume is instantly apparent. All down to excessive use of the compressor. You can see it if you rip a track from both and compare the waveforms in Audacity or Adobe Audition editors. Compression is very obvious doing that.

And no there isn't enough money in the universe to get me to add a Michael Jackson CD to my collection either

Interesting article that one - and I expect as the article is 12 years old now that MP3 is even better now than it was back then.