Under capitalism, corporate executives deserve the salaries that they are paid.

"My opponent argues that the lower-end workers are easily replaced, therefore they are worthless." No, they are not worthless. They are worth $24.475 an hour. "He insists that the quality and difficulty of their work is unimportant in the determinacy of their pay." Oh, the quality of work is very important. That's why CEOs are paid so much. Their decisions can gain or lose billions of dollars for a company. Thus, the stockholders want to get the very best CEO they can, and have the millions of dollars necessary to hire the best. "Is it justified to force the most dangerous job to be paid the least? Is it a morally acceptable act to pay high end executives at the expense of the low-pier workers that really get the job done that makes the money?" They aren't being forced to work for low pay. They can quit anytime, within the contract they choose to sign. The immense number of "low-paid" workers offsets things quite a bit; a company would go under if it paid millions to every rig worker. "The issue is, who decides that the job is worth multiple millions of dollars? And furthermore, what are the criteria for the worth of a job in a capitalist society?" Well, I can say this. Third parties are not the ones who decide whether a job is worth millions. That is the job of the stockholders, the ones who want the company to succeed. They decide that a CEO that can save their company billions is easily worth millions to pay. The worth of a job is solely determined by output. "He simply insists that the managers of corporations should have their right to decide for themselves, without regard of the opinions of society as a whole." Well, yeah. Since when does the society get to determine how much the stockholders have to pay for their own CEOs? Society is largely inexperienced with the managing of large amounts of money at the head of a company. The stockholders are experienced in these decisions, and have realized that CEOs are indeed worth millions of dollars, because they make billion-dollar decisions. "At that point, society is effectively owned and controlled by big-business – far from a fair, just system." Where is your proof that Bill Gates controls my life, or something to that extent? "My opponent simply misunderstands what I am saying. He claims that people, as individuals, rise to higher wealth as they grow older, which makes my point moot." I was simply proving that the poor get richer over time, not poorer, as you had implied. "Why should we listen to his proposed economic theory, when it is simply not the truth for all people?" On what basis does Michael Harrington make such a claim? And where does he make the assumption that CEOs are to blame for their "pockets of poverty?" "The fact that these investment companies bought up mortgages that failed because families didn't make enough money to pay for them is not a lie – it was a real cause for a real problem." Families simply did not buy homes that they would be able to buy. Banks started handing out homes left and right, some houses that the middle class wouldn't be able to afford, and it was suddenly realized that these families would never be able to pay off on the house they bought. "Finally, he attempts to argue that I concede the round based on semantics in my previous speech. Again, as I have shown in my rebuttal, we should not be looking solely to a capitalist mindset, but rather keep in mind the morality of the decisions we make." This debate is about capitalism, nothing more. I started this debate, and I determined that this debate would be about CEOs under capitalism. You're now trying to change the resolution. "In a purely capitalist society, yes, executives deserve to be paid whatever they want, so long as it benefits society." That was the resolution. "However, if you keep in mind the rights of the people and the health of the economy in mind, then the paychecks that are being sent out to these executives suddenly become far less reasonable." You're now in a Socialist mindset, here. "The only way to vote affirmative for this case is to drop all sense of human rights and allow a totalitarian regime to set in. So, for the sake of legitimacy in society and economy, I urge a negative vote." No, the obvious way to vote affirmative is to realize the clause "Under capitalism..." in the resolution, and that any arguments that don't apply to capitalism don't apply to this debate. Now, I'm going to have to destroy your Socialist perspective. From "Economic Facts and Fallacies," by Thomas Sowell, page 149: "Claims by some that they cannot understand or justify large income differences ('disparities', 'inequalities') are another version of the presumption that third parties are the best judges-- as if people's incomes, like their housing arrangements, should be judged by what a tableau they present to outsiders, rather than how they reflect the choices and mutual accommodations of those directly involved. Such third-party presumptions are often based on an awareness of being part of a more educated group having, on average, more general knowledge than most people-- and an UNAWARENESS that the TOTAL knowledge of all the others vastly exceeds theirs, as well as being more specific knowledge relevant to the decisions at hand. No third parties can possibly know the values, preferences, priorities, potentialities, circumstances, and constraints of millions of individuals better than those individuals know themselves. "Sometimes the presumptions are moral, rather than intellectual. Third parties who take on the task of deciding who 'really' deserves how much income often confuse merit with productivity, quite aside from the question whether they have the competence to judge either. In no society of human beings has everyone had the same probabilities of achieving the same level of productivity.... But an economy is not a moral seminar authorized to hand out badges of merit to deserving people. An economy is a mechanism for generating the material wealth on which the standard of living of millions of people depends.... "Although one person's income may be a hundred or a thousand times greater than another's, it is of course very doubtful that one person is a hundred or a thousand times more intelligent or works a hundred or a thousand times more intelligent or works a hundred or a thousand times as hard. But, again, INPUT is not the measure of value. RESULTS are. In a multibillion dollar corporation, one person's business decisions can easily make a difference of millions-- of even billions-- of dollars, compared to someone else's decisions. Those who see paying such a person $50 million or $100 million a year are coming at the expense of consumers or stockholders have implicitly accepted the zero-sum view of economics. If the value of the services rendered exceeds the pay, then both consumers and stockholders are better off, not worse off, whether the person hired is a corporate CEO or a production line employee." There. You're taking a Socialist view in a debate that assumes capitalism. If you want to debate this without the "Under capitalism" clause, just challenge me to that debate, but don't turn this debate into that debate. In conclusion, my opponent has conceded the resolution... twice. Thus, affirmative is the only way to vote.