A great and serious graphic from Facebook:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

[Raster]

1. Thanks for posting, Peggy!

Kick!!!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. You're welcome, my dear Raster!

As soon as I saw it, I KNEW it had to come over here.

I knew the ratio was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad.

[Raster]

5. oh yes, it is beyond bad. It is a DISGRACE!

[rwsanders]

38. I remember a Nightline episode back in the early 90's when the ratio was closer to 50:1

Ted Koppel interviewed the Japanese head of Sony and asked him what was wrong with American business:
1. Ratio of CEO pay to worker pay.
2. Lack of input from workers into how company is run.
3. Lack of job security.

[indepat]

41. This disgraceful ratio is brought to you by a corrupt and venal Congress which has largely promoted

the welfare of special interests (the 2% including large corporations) rather than the general welfare since the days the Gipper spread his bountiful wisdom on the nation.

[Comrade_McKenzie]

3. We need a cap on CEO pay that makes it 20:1. nt

[1StrongBlackMan]

6. Not a cap, per se ...

just make everything above that 20:1, non-deductible.

[TahitiNut]

29. I'd like to see Senior Executive pay ALL be after-tax ... like dividends.

As far as I'm concerned, they're just acting as proxies for ownership. Agents. Their "compensation" is nothing different than ownership taking money out of the business. Like dividends.

[1StrongBlackMan]

4. Not being a geographer; but ...

with the exceptions of Italy and Mexico, as one trends Westward, the gap increases.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

7. Shared!

Fantastic graphic.

[monmouth3]

8. I knew it was bad but this is outrageous.. Whoah...n/t

[Initech]

9. Along those same lines watch the end credits from the Will Ferrell flick "The Other Guys":

[CaliforniaPeggy]

17. Wow, very slick!

And a lot of information! Wish i could slow it down so I could really absorb all the data...

Thank you!

[DemoTex]

10. Factor in their preferential tax treatment ..

.. and US CEOs make out like bandits.

(Oops! I forgot. They often ARE bandits!)

[Mira]

11. YUP - they're definitely the job creators

utterly disgusting, heart breaking, country destroying situation

[DaveJ]

12. American culture is based on the slave economy

I don't mean to use the word "slave" lackadaisically, but that's how our country has founded and the same mentality exists today and probably forever. They think we need to be motivated by masters who are unapproachable in power. I would love for this notion to change, though.

[hifiguy]

13. Years ago I read that Akio Morita, the founder of Sony,

never took a salary of more than about $100,000 per year and lived in a modest apartment in Tokyo. Yeah, this was back in the 1970s, but Morita was quoted as saying that it would be "inappropriate" and unseemly to take more money.

[MindPilot]

46. I worked for Sony for many years...that is true.

Unfortunately, now that Morita has passed, the company seems to be dying too.

Although Sony tended to take on some of the corporate culture of whatever country they were operating in, they never let you forget that Sony is a Japanese company. The executives still had nice offices, but it wasn't unusual to see upper management working in cubes right alongside everyone else. They felt isolated in the big corner offices the American corporate culture provided.

[Paper Roses]

14. Wow!. No wonder I came home from Xmas shopping in a real 'down' mood.

I can't spend on Christmas gifts what these folks probably spend on a dinner out.
Something is wrong here folks.

[lobodons]

15. GOP response to graph

Then move to Japan why don't you.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. This is a perfect setup

For social unrest.

[SalviaBlue]

18. Good one!

[ismnotwasm]

19. Oh wow

That is awesome, thank you. I collect these things for wallpaper on my iPad--makes for interesting conversation

[CaliforniaPeggy]

20. I believe that!

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in your house!

Or wherever you're having your conversations...

[The Wielding Truth]

21. I had no idea it was this bad!

[99Forever]

22. But.. but.. but...

.. they are the job creators and we are merely expenses that stifle the Holiest God of Profit.

[leftstreet]

23. DURec

[hue]

24. Thanks and posted on FB-->to go viral!!

[Enrique]

25. for people interested in the sourcing

ignore their "ruling", PolitiFact's rulings are worthless. But their information about where these numbers come from is very good imo.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/oct/10/facebook-posts/viral-facebook-post-ceo-worker-pay-ratio-has-obscu/

[CaliforniaPeggy]

26. Thanks for the link!

[ReallyIAmAnOptimist]

49. Thanks! Unsourced data makes me crazy...

...I'd sure like to see some up to date reliable data in a similar chart though.

[patrice]

27. Authentically shocking. Values??????

[Whovian]

28. I like it with music.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021930254

[CaliforniaPeggy]

30. I'm sorry.......I missed your post....

[Matariki]

31. There needs to be a day of reckoning.

Just saying...

[texshelters]

32. I hate to harp on this

but what is the source? I believe this is true, but is it too much to ask for a link or a citation?

PTxS

[CaliforniaPeggy]

36. Please see Post #34.

The picture I took from Facebook had no attribution.

And it is certainly not too much to ask!

[ProfessionalLeftist]

33. Politifact fact-check:

. . .

We located a scanned version of the paper on the Internet, and it did appear to be written by Prof. Mark Kroll. His institution wasn’t listed, but after some additional searching, we found that Kroll had been teaching at the Louisiana Tech College of Business in 2005 and that he is now the business dean at the University of Texas at Brownsville. But it turns out he didn’t write the paper after all.

"Actually, I am the ‘recipient’ of the paper you refer to," Kroll told us in an e-mail. "The paper was done as a class project by three of my students in a graduate class back in 2005. The 475-to-1 ratio that you reference is listed in a table in the paper the students wrote. They do not give a specific citation for the data in the table."

The paper’s cover sheet fooled us -- as it fooled others -- because the professor’s name appears in the middle of the page, and the three students’ names appear together at the bottom in a less prominent spot. We tried to reach the co-authors -- Adam Choate, Dana Rowzee and Jerrod Tinsley, all of whom were working on their Master of Business Administration in 2005 -- but we did not hear back.

So how about the substance of the chart?

From previous fact-checks, we knew that American CEOs are generously paid, and we had confirmed that for ordinary Americans, incomes are stagnating.

But on the specific comparison of CEO pay and average-worker pay, we found two liberal groups -- the Economic Policy Institute and the Institute for Policy Studies -- that have produced long-running studies of this question.

. . .

. . .the most recent ratio from the Institute for Policy Studies is also smaller -- for 2010, it was 325 to 1. In previous years the ratio on two occasions has exceeded 475 to 1 -- to be specific, 516 to 1 in 1999 and 525 to 1 in 2000.

MORE...

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/oct/10/facebook-posts/viral-facebook-post-ceo-worker-pay-ratio-has-obscu/

[docgee]

34. This is exaggerated... Here are the real figures:

http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-231-times-greater-average-worker/

[CaliforniaPeggy]

35. Thank you........this does appear to be accurate. n/t

[texshelters]

37. Thanks for

the citation and info. It's still bad, as you make clear.

PTxS

[jsr]

39. Great chart.

[otohara]

40. PolitFact Rating This as FALSE

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/oct/10/facebook-posts/viral-facebook-post-ceo-worker-pay-ratio-has-obscu/

[gateley]

42. Infuriating! K&R!

[James48]

43. keeper. n/t

[Overseas]

45. K&R. Very clear reason we need more revenue from the top.

[Ganja Ninja]

47. Remember this the next time someone tells you ...

American Business can't compete or when they start pissing and moaning about the corporate tax rate.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

48. Exactly right.