J. Edward Ketz is uniquely qualified to discuss the technical aspects of CEO pay judging by his resume - an accounting professor at The Pennsylvania State University focusing on financial accounting and accounting ethics, he also wrote Hidden Financial Risk, a book that explores the cause of recent accounting scandals. The following is an excerpt from the SmartPros.com opinion article “Politics of CEO Pay:”

The class division may not be as bad as slavery, but everyday Americans are unhappy with their lot. Who can blame them as the good jobs are outsourced to foreign lands and eliminated in corporate restructurings? Poorly paid service jobs have replaced the better paying jobs. Firms like Walmart do all they can to keep the low-paying jobs low. I have a nephew who was recently fired from Walmart after working there a number of years and receiving several raises. His boss told him that he could get his job back if he were willing to receive the minimum wage. Does that sound fair?

The disparity in pay might not be badly received if laborers felt that executives had so much greater skill and added a tremendous amount of value to the firm. Given what has happened in the credit markets, however, I believe that the average citizen is questioning the competence of corporate executives. If these privileged executives really knew what they were doing and really made incisive decisions, then how did the meltdown occur in the credit markets? And why should CEOs be spared their jobs when Americans, right and left, are losing their homes? When the average Joe or Jane makes mistakes, they lose their job. Why don't more CEOs get the axe because of their incompetence? And, when they are let go, why are they entitled to a severance pay that others can get only if they win the lottery?

Additionally, the disparity in pay might not be badly received if Americans thought that the executives were morally straight and honest and trustworthy. Given the thousands of accounting restatements over the years, that image has been shattered. Watching corporate officials pay huge fines and go to prison, one instead wonders how a person could become so greedy or how corporate big shots can envision corporate assets as their own. This point is driven home by jokes like child in a sandbox telling the other that his mom said it was ok to talk with strangers as long as they weren't CEOs…

At this point I do not think Americans are ready to rebel in any significant way. But, if CEOs continue to mold themselves into nobles like the French aristocrats of the 18th century while the wealth of average Americans continues to evaporate, don't be surprised if a decade or so from now the little guys storm an American Bastille, metaphorically or literally. Aggrieved peons and urban wage-earners can take only so much of this self-aggrandizement.