A new study by a team of top economists finds that if the tax rate for the highest-income Americans was pegged at—drum roll please—83 percent—it wouldn’t impact anyone but the “mega-rich.”

You’ve heard all the reasons given for the economic implosion of 2008: the bursting of the housing bubble, the risky investments of financial firms, the use of incomprehensible financial instruments as get-rich-quick-schemes—all of them the result of a massive agenda of across-the-board deregulation pushed by Republican lawmakers since the 1980s.

The Americans for Financial Reform Conference on Executive Pay and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act will discuss this afternoon a provision that would disclose the CEO-to-worker pay ratio to investors and the public for the first time. The AFL-CIO is hosting the conference.

In 1965, when the U.S. economy was humming, the average CEO collected $24 for every $1 earned by a worker. Today, as the economy struggles, that ratio is $243-to-$1. It sounds bad and as the chart shows, looks even worse. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows the trend here.

Working familes in Washington, D.C., and Cannes, France (where leaders of the G-20 are meeting), rallied yesterday for passage of a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street. You can join the action by telling Wall Street it’s time to pay its fair share.

Of last year’s 100 highest-paid U.S. corporate chief executives, 25 took home more in CEO pay than their company paid in 2010 federal corporate income taxes, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

UPDATE: Tomorrow morning, Aug. 8, thousands of striking workers will join mass picket lines and rallies at more than 100 Verizon work locations across New York and New Jersey to push the highly profitable company to back off its sweeping demands. The list of picket lines and rallies is here.

And in the Washington, D.C., area, you can show your support for striking workers at a mobilization rally Monday at noon at the Chesapeake Complex, 13100 Columbia Pike, Silver Spring.

Boeing Co. Executive Vice President and General Counsel Michael Luttig pulled in $3.7 million in compensation in 2009. That’s a whopping 34 percent increase from 2008—and it came during a major recession.

Meanwhile, as Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) pointed out during a hearing yesterday (see video) on the shrinking American middle class, Boeing’s workers have seen just a 3 percent increase in their average compensation over the past 20 years!

While 25 million unemployed and underemployed U.S. workers are drowning, CEO pay skyrocketed by 23 percent, for an average salary of $11.4 million in 2010, according to the AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch. Released today, data compiled at PayWatch also show CEOs have done little to create badly-needed jobs, instead sitting on a record $1.93 trillion in cash on their balance sheets.

Here’s another reason to do away with runaway CEO pay.  A study shows bloated CEO pay can make the boss mean.

The study examined the corporate behavior of 261 companies and found a close correlation between pay inequality and poor treatment of workers. In companies where CEOs made much more than their average workers, the companies were more likely to underfund pensions or cut corners on health and safety. Often, according to the study, the bosses engaged in a cost-benefit analysis, calculating that a fine would be a cost of doing business, compared with the profits they could make.