Plato believed that the rulers of the ideal society should be paid no more than four times what the lowliest member of that society was paid. In the US in 1980, CEO compensation was estimated to be 42 times that of average employees; by 2005, it was 411 times. The $700 billion government bailout of 2008 rescued many major financial institutions whose leader had steered the US into the worse economic crisis since the Great Depression. While millions of jobs, homes, and retirement savings were lost, senior executives in the financial sector were rewarded with enormous pay packages. In 2009, for example, Thomas Montag CEO of Bank of American received nearly $30 million. Lloyd Bankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs and Walid Chammah, CEO of Morgan Stanley were each given about $10 million. As of 2012, the average salary of a CEO was 354 times that of an average employee.

Analyze executive compensation with the ethical toolkit. How would Milton Friedman want to recompense corporate executives? How would a utilitarian? A deonotological thinker? What would a virtue ethicist have to say about executive compensation? What would be the response of the ethic of care?