Forum Post: Average Executive pay to worker pay in 1965: 24:1. Average executive pay to worker pay today: 265:1.

The problem is that as the highest marginal tax rates dropped from 90% in the 1950's, 70% in the 1970's, 49% in the 1980's, 39% in the 1990's, and a meager 36% in the 2000's and there no longer was no disincentive to pay out all of the corporate profits to the few at the top and the shareholders.

Middle class wages have stagnated since 1980 while executive salaries have ballooned 256%. Middle class wages were replaced by the corporations with easy credit and loans. We felt rich because we could get easy loans to buy tv's, furniture, cars, homes. The reality is the middle class has become a debtor class with no savings and massive piles of debt.

The middle class, the economic engine of our economy, spent it's wealth on corporate goods and services and the corporations took the profit from that spending and transferred it into the hands of the few at the top. The problem is that our economic engine has stalled because the easy credit gravy has stopped and the middle class has no been paid wages that can drive spending and the economy.

All of the middle class wealth has been redistributed into the hands of the few because there is no tax disincentive and unlimited money from the wealthy and big business in politics.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/07/10/8380799/ http://blogs.hbr.org/fox/2011/01/can-and-will-business-do-anyth.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter http://www.epi.org/publication/webfeatures_snapshots_20060621/ http://cornellhrreview.org/2009/12/21/the-executive-pay-drama-from-comedy-to-tragedy/ http://abcnews.go.com/Business/walmart-ceo-pay-hour-workers-year/story?id=11067470 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/business/lets-stop-rewarding-failed-ceos-common-sense.html?_r=1&ref=executivepay http://www.svsu.edu/emplibrary/Whelton%20article.pdf

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/econ/sempapers/Frydman1.pdf

http://www.americanprogress.org/kf/ceo_pay_web_final.pdf