Richest get richer as pay gap widens

The pay package for chief executives in companies climbed for the fourth straight year last year.

How did your pay package do? Get a hefty raise, more vacation, stock bonuses? How about a better health or life insurance package?

No?

Maybe a little bit of a raise?

Well, if you had been a CEO, your median income package would have climbed more than 50 percent over the past four yours, rising above the $10,000,000.00 mark for the first time last year.

Yep. You, as the head of a typical large public company, would have earned a record $10.5 million in 2013, an Associated Press/Equilar pay study shows.

You would now make about 257 times the average worker's salary.

For every dollar one of the average workers in your company makes, you would make 257 dollars. That worker gets one cheeseburger off the dollar menu. You get 257 of them.

That's a lot of dollar menu burgers.

And to think in 2009, the CEO pay package was a mere 181 times the average worker's salary. That was so much more reasonable.

Before you go accusing me of being a share the wealth person, not exactly. I'm not all about redistributing the wealth to even things out. If you work hard for something, you deserve to be compensated for it.

If you're a lazy piece of something or another, you should also get deservedly compensated for that.

That goes for all workers. If you're bringing something to the table, you deserve a piece of the pie at dessert time. If at dessert time, you're just pulling up a chair to the table, you deserve a piece of that chocolate pie served in the movie "The Help."

It was a special – very special – piece of chocolate pie.

By the way, the industry with the biggest pay bump in the past year was banking.

Who would've guessed that one?

The median pay of a Wall Street CEO rose 22 percent last year, on top of a 22 percent increase the year before. According to the Associated Press/Equilar pay study, BlackRock chief Larry Fink made the most at $22.9 million while Kenneth Chenault of American Express ranked second at $21.7 million.

It's like they win the lottery every year. Every year they win the lottery. They win the lottery every year.

Every year.

The lottery.

They win it.

Something's just not right with that.

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