Every Labor Day, the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy release a study on the growing CEO-worker pay gap. I know, I'm a few weeks late on this one, but the results are worth revisiting. (Click here to view the full report, "Executive Excess 2007." Thanks to Carla Murphy for sending the link)

The most interesting finding is not the growth in the gap—it has been widening for so long that it barely makes the news anymore—but the comparison between CEO pay in Europe and the U.S. In 2006, the 20 highest-paid European corporate managers made only one third as much as the 20 highest-earning U.S. executives, even though they led companies that generated $19 billion more in sales revenue.

Defenders of skyrocketing CEO pay often claim that the compensation is justified because of the value a top CEO can bring to a company. But the Executive Excess report provides evidence, as if any was needed, that CEOs of U.S. corporations are paid well beyond their value to the companies they run.

Additional findings:

• CEOs of large U.S. companies last year made as much money from just one day on the job as average workers made over the entire year. These top executives averaged $10.8 million in total compensation, over 364 times the pay of the average American worker.
  
• Workers at the bottom rung of the U.S. economy have just received the first federal minimum wage increase in a decade. But the new minimum wage still stands 7 percent below where the minimum wage stood a decade ago in real terms. CEO pay, over that same decade, has increased by roughly 45 percent.
  
• CEOs at major U.S. corporations enjoyed, on average, $1.3 million in pension gains last year. By contrast, only 58.5 percent of American households led by a 45-to-54-year-old even had a retirement account in 2004.
  
• The top 386 CEOs took in perks worth an average of $438,342 in 2006. A minimum wage worker would need to work 36 years to earn as much as CEOs obtained just in perks last year.

According to the report, CEO pay began to get out of control in the 1980s when "tax rates on America's richest tax payers began to plummet." The researchers offered six proposals for change, mainly focusing on eliminating perverse tax incentives, such as loopholes that allow corporations to deduct bloated CEO pay as a business expense.

Even suggesting that corporations or the top income brackets should pay more taxes usually brings out the tax-cut brigade, repeating their mantra of "Tax cuts are good for the economy!" But anything beyond a cursory review suggests this economy isn't doing that well. Half of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck (I've seen estimates ranging from 40% to 70%), and Alan Greenspan predicts inflation will double within the next few years.

That isn't good news for those of use outside the C-suite.