Corporate Greed and How It's Affecting the Lives of Workers and America Financially
It is false to believe that every America has an opportunity to move up in life.  This is because the American dream is broken.  It is quite disappointing to note that today's generation will be the first in modern history to be poorer than their parents.  There is an ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor and this has been ignored by the investors and policymakers.  This inequality is not just a side-effect of capitalism.  It is a symptom of policy negligence.  Capitalism is incredibly successful in boosting wealth.  However, it has failed to redistribute this wealth.  According to the American Federation of Labor (2019), economic policies have always favored the corporate CEO and Wall Street.  This has resulted in an economy that is completely out of balance.  A majority of CEO's are mainly focused on shareholder return and will hold the employee accountable for the organization's profitability.  Corporate executives no longer care about the employees and they are mostly concerned about the bottom line and profits that the organization makes.  Leaders have a moral obligation to create an environment that is mutually beneficial to the leaders and to the employees.  It has been shown that it is morally wrong for a corporate executive to attempt to get so much from their employees while they give them as little as possible.  Our thesis statement is “Americans should implement policies that ensure there is equal pay for all employees and reduce the exorbitant compensation that is dished out to executives”.

Mishel and Davis (2015) posit that American CEO's earn three times more than the average CEO earned say 20 years ago and they also earn about 10 times more than they did 30 years ago.  This would not be shocking had the average wages of the employees also have grown in the same trajectory.  However, the average employee salary has not increased as that of the CEO.  The wages of workers have been stagnated for many years and for some they have even declined.  A majority of employees are forced to work longer hours and they earn even lower wages.  It is estimated that the average take home is about $5,000 less than it was in 1999.  In the meantime, wealthy individuals and large corporations are doing quite well.  New income is nowadays going to the top executives of corporations.  What this is doing is that it is concentrating wealth and money within small circles making it hard for common individuals to survive.  It is posited that a huge chunk of employees is living paycheck to paycheck.  Even with the decline rates of unemployment employers are still unwilling to increase the average rates of employees.  The average American workers have lost their bargaining power, while the executives have actually gained even more bargaining power.

Corporate Greed Should Be Stopped

The CEO compensation from 1978 to 2014 has increased 997 percent while that of the average worker has only increased by 10.9 percent.  This paints the grim picture of corporate greed.  There is no justification for this compensation increase as the CEO does very little as compared to the workers on the floor (Kovacic-Fleischer, 2017).  In fact, if there were no workers, the CEO would not be able to perform any of the responsibilities that are charged to the workers.  Greed is what has ensured that the CEO way more than the workers.  While we do understand that it is no possible for all workers and corporate executives to have the same wages, it is disappointing to see the huge disparities between compensation growth.  This continues to enrich the already rich individuals and the poor continue to become even poorer.  In most instances, the increase in CEO compensation is not based on the improvement of the firm’s performance.  It is based on the individual firm’s performance on the stock...…discourage them from seeking higher pay.  This would, in turn, be beneficial to the employees as they will also get increased wages.  There has been a tax break given for executive performance pay that was implemented during the Clinton administration.  Lobbyists have been pushing for the removal of this policy.  With its removal, there will be no incentive for executives to hide behind it and award themselves the huge compensation packages that they do and term them as performance pay.  The minimum wage for employees should be increased across the board and this is only possible via policy changes (Sanders, 2015).  With an increase in the minimum wage, employees will receive fair compensation for work done and there will be a reduction of corporate greed.  This will also increase the purchasing power of Americans as they will have more money spend.  

A majority of corporations are still cooking their books and using underhanded techniques to fool the consumers all with the aim of making profits (Burnett, 2019).  There should be stricter regulations and policies that ensure that corporations are completely discouraged from participating in these strategies.  Numerous corporations have been found to be using tricks to manipulate the perception of consumers and to manipulate their stocks.  This is all done to improve the performance of the company with the aim of increasing the executives’ pay.  With policies in place that will discourage greed and harsher penalties for anyone found in violation of these policies, it is most likely that executives will be discouraged against participating in such underhanded techniques.  Looking into ways for reducing the reward that is given to executives as compensation for the firm's performance will reduce greed.  The main reason greed takes over is because there is a huge reward awaiting the executives.  Removing or reducing this reward will, in turn, reduce their desire to increase their pay and they will most likely be forced to focus on the employees and not on themselves.