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

"Because there are differences in these salaries between different businesses, some less controversial than others, I believe it would be best to focus on the heart of the issue – whether large executives deserve the higher salaries that they typically receive or not." Correct. "Contention 1: Corporate executives may work, but they do not have a greater workload than a worker at a much lower position." This may be true, but at the same time, it is irrelevant. Just because an employee's workload is safer doesn't mean that the job deserves less of a salary. Supply and demand is key in this. http://money.cnn.com... "In the next two years, Noble plans on bringing five new drilling rigs online. It takes about 150 workers to staff each rig. The total number of employees required to keep these rigs running around the clock is about 300. That means Noble needs to hire nearly 1500 new employees in the next two years, an increase of over 20%." Thousands of workers are hired for these companies; thousands more can replace them. Furthermore, an individual oil-rig worker is not nearly as important as an individual corporate executive. Finally, just because it looks as if the stockholders of a company are paying an individual more for a job that is seemingly less important, doesn't mean that the corporate executive doesn't deserve the money that he makes. "This difference in pay is the heart of controversy in this topic, and reveals the problem with not only corporate executive salaries in general, but the inequality in workplaces." Inequality in workplaces is unavoidable for a practical business under capitalism, and as long as a corporate executive's job is deemed important enough to be worthy of a multi-million dollar salary, the job will be paid a multi-million dollar salary. "Contention 2: Overpaying executives creates an economic gap between the wealthier and poorer people" This is still irrelevant. "This is harmful for economy, for, contrary to the concept of 'Trickle-Down"' economics, there are constantly people who are not benefited from the investments of the wealthy." And who exactly are these people? And why does this make a corporate executive undeserving of his salary? "Moreover, as the rich become richer and the poor become poorer, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain a healthy economy. At the point that the majority of the people in a society are poor, unemployment and deflation occur – suddenly, people need items to cost less money in order to purchase them, which causes the investments of the rich to become practically worthless." This is seriously the worst economic fallacy in history. From Thomas Sowell's Economic Facts and Fallacies, page 136: "Studies which follow specific individuals over a period of years must not be confused with statistics on incomes in society as a whole over a period of years, or even statistics on particular income brackets over a period of years. The crucial difference is that most people move from one income bracket to another as the years go on. That makes it completely misleading to say, for example, that 'people making minimum wage have waited ten long years of a raise,' because these are not the same people making the same wages for ten years, even when the minimum wage has not been changed in a decade. Far from being an enduring class, most Americans in the bottom 10 or 20 percent of income-earners are transients in those brackets-- as are people in other income brackets." And on page 139: "To say that the bottom 20 percent of households are 'falling further behind' those in upper income brackets-- as is often said in the media, in politics, and among the intelligentsia-- is not to say that any given flesh-and-blood individuals are falling further behind, since most of the people in the bottom 20 percent move ahead over time to rise into higher income brackets. Moreover, even when an abstract statistical category is falling behind other abstract statistical categories, that does not necessarily represent a declining real per capita income, even among those people transiently within that category." Basically, there are always the poor, and there are always the rich, but people will shift among these brackets many times within their lifetime, often reaching near the top right before retirement, and the poor get richer, and the rich retire. "As the wealthier Americans purchased mortgages and home equity loans from banks as investments, the point when people could no longer pay them turned those loans into toxic assets, draining money out of the US, and ultimately world, economy. I'm certain I don't need to explain the harms of an economic crisis like the one we currently experience." That was not the fault of the wealthier Americans; that was the fault of the banks for making interest rates so low that it became extremely profitable for investment. "Yes, corporate executives are doing a job, and they do deserve to be paid according to capitalist ideology." My opponent just conceded the resolution... "However, the conflict rises at the point that executives are paid more than those under them." That conflict is not the resolution of the debate; the debate is about whether or not the corporate executives deserve their salaries for their work. Which you have just conceded, apparently. Thus, it is obvious that a PRO vote is in order. Thank you for reading.