CEO Salaries and the Middle Class

USA Today reported on a study that found CEO pay has climbed back to the pre-recession level; however, pay for the newly employeed are not meeting living standards of $30,000 a year based on a study from Wider Opportunities for Women.

"Too few American families are living in economically secure households, with most workers unable to stretch their incomes over basic expenses and savings," Joan Kuriansky, executive director of WOW said in a statement. "The American Dream of working hard to support your family is being rewritten by the growth of low paying industries and rising expenses."

On top of falling wages, the programs that usually help keep a family out of poverty, Head Start, Childcare Assistance Program, WIC, are being cut at the state and national levels at an alarming rate. This will hit single parents the hardest, which by a large percentage tend to be women.

This is happening while CEO's salaries of the very companies that our tax dollars bailed out have jumped 27% in 2010. Meanwhile middle class workers pay grew only by 2%. This is according to the Bureau of Labor and Statics.