"In effect, the gap between worker and executive pay has multiplied an amazing tenfold since the early 1980s

"The reason: The mid-20th century checks and balances of our economic system -- the building blocks of post-World War II American middle-class prosperity -- have been swept away.

"Government regulations, for instance, used to discourage shady corporate practices that pumped up profits at consumer expense. Corporate lobbyists have had these regulations erased, over the last 30 years, in industry after industry.

"Something else has changed, too. We no longer have a vital trade union presence in the U.S. economy.

"Back on the 1950s, more than one-third of American private-sector workers belonged to unions. Bargaining between these workers and their employers helped raise wages for all workers and, at the same time, kept executive rewards reasonable

"Today, only 7.4 percent of private-sector employees belong to unions. This absence of a union check on executive power leaves CEOs free to pocket rewards at levels that would have seemed recklessly greedy only a generation ago.

"Recent academic research has demonstrated the difference that a union presence can make on executive pay. One survey, published in the Journal of Labor Research, found that CEOs at nonunion companies take home nearly 20 percent more than executives in unionized firms. Workers in union companies, meanwhile, make $200 more a week than their nonunion counterparts.

"CEO-worker pay divides run particularly wide in the service in dustries, where only a tiny percentage of workers belong to unions. In food services, workers average only $18,877 a year. The CEOs of the top 10 firms in this industry -- we're talking outfits like McDonald's and YUM Brands, the owner of KFC and Pizza Hut -- took home 354 times that much in 2007."

And as the AFL-CIO blog reports:

"Of the two presidential candidates, Barack Obama has taken a strong stand against excessive CEO pay. He introduced the Shareholder Vote on Executive Compensation Act, which would give shareholders the chance to signal their displeasure with executive pay through a nonbinding vote. He says excessive CEO pay goes against the American value of being paid well when you do a good job. Speaking at an Indianapolis press conference in May, he said:

If you're successful, you should be rewarded. But if you're a Wall Street CEO today, it doesn't seem to matter whether you're doing a good job or a bad job for your shareholders and workers: You'll be rewarded either way. When (John McCain) has had the chance to do something about this problem, he's opted for continuing the do-nothing approach of the Bush years.

"Obama also is supporting a fix for so-called "carried interest," a tax loophole that allows buyout kings”like Kohlberg Kravis Robers & Co.'s (KKR's) Henry Kravis, whose personal net worth is $5.5 billion”to pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries.

"Says [Sarah] Anderson:

When financial royalty like Kravis don't pay their fair share, the rest of us common taxpayers get stuck with the bill. And that's just one of numerous tax loopholes that shift the financial burden for our country's infrastructure, education and other needs from the ultrarich to the middle class.

"The biggest barrier to real reform, Anderson says, is the money Kravis and other big earners have used to dispatch "armies of lobbyists to Capitol Hill."