It seems like eons ago that Ben and Jerry’s structured their company so that the highest-paid employee would make no more than 5 times the salary of the lowest-paid employee. Regrettably, Ben and Jerry’s was eventually bought out by Unilever, and though that ratio had changed in the ensuing years to something much higher, it is no longer part of the Ben and Jerry’s corporate mindset. While there isn’t any good reason why other corporations could not follow this same sort of ratio formula, we find that while there are a few that do have a reasonable ratio between CEO pay and the lowest-paid employee, this, though, is the exception and seldom the rule. Instead, we have a situation in which there are CEOs who, with their stock options in conjunction with other parts of their compensation package, are making more than $100 million annually, which is a true reflection that this nation is separating itself, in which the very few have everything and then some, whereas more and more Americans struggle paycheck to paycheck.
It is hard to justify that any CEO should get 1000x or even more than what the lowest-paid employee receives, and further that this is somehow the way that capitalism should work, of which that belief seems to be that this is beneficial for the country as a whole, because it is part and parcel of the free enterprise system, but the reality is that it just reflects pure greed. No doubt, CEOs deserve to make a decent amount of money, especially when it can be proven that it is they, and they alone, which has produced all that extra income and profit for the corporation, but in actuality, it’s hard to believe that just one person, no matter how skilled and astute that they are is truly worth more than 1000 times the lowest-paid employee, but rather there should be some sort of reasonable cap on how much a given CEO should make as their full compensation package which takes into account, that corporations consist of a body of employees, working together, to be of benefit to that corporation and hopefully, as well, to the marketplace that they sell their products or provide a service to.
A world in which there is a better and a fairer distribution of the profits so made via a corporation is going to make for a healthier society than a society in which so many still do not make a living wage and therefore struggle paycheck to paycheck, making for a rather unsatisfactory life for them, and a more troubling society for most everyone. Indeed, a responsible corporation is that corporation which believes that part of its mission is to pay a fair wage for a fair day’s work, and further to the point, makes sure that the profits that the corporation makes are fairly distributed to those who make up that corporation. To follow this sort of structure is to be a responsible corporate citizen, who thus does their fair part to help make society better through their good contribution to it.