CEO Salaries

The salaries of CEO’s have risen dramatically over the past 30 years and one of the reasons is that the system has been corrupted. Specialists are hired to determine salaries and they base their recommendations on other CEO salaries. This has led to a case of the dog chasing the tail and higher and higher pay is the result. Over this time the average pay has gone from 25 times what the regular employee makes to over 250 times. The average CEO today makes $10 million dollars where the average employee makes $40,000. As I was mulling over the unfairness of this caused by the free market being corrupted I discovered that this week a baseball player signed a $325 million dollar contract that will pay him $25 million per year for 13 years. He gets this money even if he cannot play due to illness or injury. This young man is 25 years old, half the age when a CEO gets his job and at twice the pay. CEO’s rarely stay in their jobs for 13 years so the ball player will have his money at a much younger age and earn it for more years. This comparison is somewhat unfair since it compares the average CEO against the highest paid player but there are only 40 CEO’s who earn more that this young man.