Ceos Are Paid Too Much

In today’s struggling economy, it is not hard to tell that the CEO’s of the largest corporations are making far too much money. They claim their paychecks are justifiable because of their company’s success and inherent to our capitalistic society; but as these corporations become richer they continue to undermine the efficiency of our country’s political system and the common good for our population as a whole. Furthermore, morality has become almost entirely absent in bigger business practice in order to pursue higher profits. Its obvious that restrictions must be emplaced in order to preserve the quality of life for the majority of U.S. citizens and prevent further misappropriation of political resources in favor of giant corporations over the American people. Over the last 30 years, the salary received by the average CEO has increased exponentially. The salary received by the average hourly worker, of course, has not. In 1980, CEOs were paid 42 times the average amount of money paid to hourly workers; by 2000 it had grown to a staggering 531 times.1 Its clear that as revenue grows, the pay gap between worker and CEO grows exponentially as well. In a corporation that only generates $5,000,000 in annual revenue, the CEO receives 5.4 times the median pay of all other employees. But in a corporation that generates $2,500,000,000 in annual revenue, the CEO receives 91.6 times the pay of all other employees.2 The gap between the super rich and the rest of our population is wider than ever. This would not be such a monumental problem if the super rich did not have such a powerful voice behind the scenes of our nation’s politics.
With billions of dollars of net worth, giant corporations are able to fund both political campaigns and lobbyists to ensure their agenda is given priority over other options. Giant corporations are making giant donations to political candidates, and these donations create an obvious conflict of interest between the elected officials and

Bibliography: 1. Reh, John. "CEOs Are Overpaid." About.com. Web. <http://management.about.com/cs/generalmanagement/a/CEOsOverpaid.htm>. 2. Culpepper, Leigh, and Eric Hurst. "Reporting CEO-to-Employee Pay Ratios: Navigating the Minefield." Soceity for Human Resource Managment. Web. <http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/compensation/Articles/Pages/PayRatios.aspx>. 3. Hynes, Rory. "Top Ten Unethical Business Tactics." Listverse.com. Web. <http://listverse.com/2011/09/13/top-10-unethical-business-actions/>.