Top CEOs are having a great year — are you?

This is a good year to be one of America’s top CEOs. The recent comeback of the stock market also caused a comeback of the biggest chunk of executive compensation, the stock option.

The first quarter of the year is traditionally the time of year that corporate CEOs receive a majority of their stock options, but in early 2009, the stock market was trading at a 12-year low. Corporate compensation boards weren’t sure which way their stock was going to go, and to make up for the huge depreciation in the options they granted in 2008, companies piled the options onto their top execs.

They didn’t see the stock market surge coming. From the Associated Press:

America's top CEOs are set for a once-in-a-lifetime pay bonanza...

An Associated Press analysis of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index shows that 85 percent of the stock options given to CEOs last year are now worth more than they were on the day they were granted. For some the value jumped by a factor of 10 or more.

Ford Motor Company CEO Alan Mulally saw his $5 million stock package's value jump to $48 million in just one year—a staggering increase of 600%.

You might say that Alan Mulally pushed Ford into the profitable zone, and you could argue that he deserves to be rewarded for turning the company around and helping it avoid GM's fate, but compared to the average Ford employee’s pay of around $40 an hour in wages, bonuses, overtime and paid time off, the potential profit from the sale of $48 million in stock options is outrageously large.

Americans are increasingly upset at the difference between what the person at the top of the corporate ladder is making and the compensation of those working hard below, and for good reason.

In 1965, the ratio of average total CEO to worker compensation was a mere 24 CEO dollars for every dollar made by workers. At that rate, Mulally’s total annual pay package would be about $2 million--pretty reasonable. Jumping forward to 2008, the ratio of average CEO to worker pay also jumps, to 275 CEO dollars for every one worker dollar, eleven times the previous ratio.

The rise in CEO compensation is just one example of how the rich in America are growing richer faster, while the lower and middle income groups are just creeping forward. British social scientists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett blame this income disparity for most of the ills facing American society today.

To bring attention to the societal effects of this inequality, Wilkinson and Pickett wrote The Spirit Level, Why More Equal Societies Almost Always do Better. According to the book's website:

1. In rich countries, a smaller gap between rich and poor means a happier, healthier, and more successful population.

2. More economic growth will NOT lead to a happier, healthier, or more successful population. In fact, there is no relation between income per head and social well-being in rich countries.

3. It's not just poor people who do better. The evidence suggests people all the way up would benefit [from greater equality], although it's true that the poorest would gain the most.

The Center for American Progress’ Matt Miller agrees. In his book, The Tyranny of Dead Ideas, Miller calls inequality “the central economic issue of the twenty-first century.” He notes that inequality between nations is currently shrinking, but within nations, it’s widening, a sure recipe for social unrest.

We’re seeing the United States change from a country where anything is possible, to a country in which the ones on top stay there and the ones on the bottom stay there too. From a meritocracy to an oligarchy.

Huge executive and corporate bank accounts hold an enormous amount of power. If money is speech, as the Supreme Court reaffirmed in Corporations United, how much more speech do those on the top of corporate America have in relation to the rest of us? Democracy is a tenuous thing in an unequal society.