5 Facts about the Wealthiest 1 Percent

FACT #3: Among the 299 companies listed in the S&P 500 Index, the average CEO's compensation was $11.4 million in 2010, or 343 times more than the median pay ($33,190) of American workers. The ratio of CEO pay to median worker pay was just 42:1 in 1980, and is currently 25:1 in Europe.

According to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which tracks executive salaries on a website called Executive Paywatch, those 299 CEOs have a combined income of $3.4 billion per year, which could pay for 102,325 average American jobs.

Bill Domhoff, a sociologist at UC Santa Cruz, claims the ballooning of chief executives' salaries in recent years has resulted from the fact that, for the most part, they set their own wages. "If you wonder how such a large gap could develop, the proximate, or most immediate, factor involves the way in which CEOs now are able to rig things so that the board of directors, which they help select — and which includes some fellow CEOs on whose boards they sit — gives them the pay they want," Domhoff wrote in a 2011 article on his website. [Graph of worker vs. CEO salaries]