The Outrageous Ascent of CEO Pay
"Consider that in 1965, CEOs of America’s largest corporations were paid, on average, 20 times the pay of average workers.
Now, the ratio is over 300 to 1.
Not only has CEO pay exploded, so has the pay of top executives just below them.
The share of corporate income devoted to compensating the five highest-paid executives of large corporations ballooned from an average of 5 percent in 1993 to more than 15 percent by 2005 (the latest data available).
Corporations might otherwise have devoted this sizable sum to research and development, additional jobs, higher wages for average workers, or dividends to shareholders – who, not incidentally, are supposed to be the owners of the firm.
Corporate apologists say CEOs and other top executives are worth these amounts because their corporations have performed so well over the last three decades that CEOs are like star baseball players or movie stars.
Baloney. Most CEOs haven’t done anything special. The entire stock market surged over this time.
Even if a company’s CEO simply played online solitaire for thirty years, the company’s stock would have ridden the wave."
