CEOs in America are routinely rewarded on the basis of their bottom lines. The one goal of CEOs is to reduce costs and increase profits. And what is the best way for CEOs to reduce costs? By firing their employees, of course.

The incentive, for the CEO of a company experiencing reduced profits, to fire workers is high. By managing costs through the level of employed workers, a CEO can mitigate the fallout from excessively risky investments while maintaining high profits for the company and a high salary for himself.

Americans are so ingrained with this approach that it is almost laughable when one of us discusses an alternative. But we need only look to Germany to see the benefit of disincentivizing mass layoffs. The German government provides incentives to firms and actually pays them not to lay people off in an economic downturn.

It’s one thing to dismiss mass firings from an insolvent company that has no other resort, but CEOs in America constantly sacrifice the livelihood of their workers just so they can avoid a pay-cut. Americans view the management of our corporations as titans of industry, acting neither benevolently or malevolently, but simply in the most efficient manner possible. When they layoff a massive amount of workers, Americans “know” it increases productivity levels and is done only for the betterment of the company’s long-term sustainability. “Mass layoffs are better for everyone!”

The common mentality of the cable “news” agency goes something along these lines: “CEOs are taking cuts as well. Plus, if we do not pay our CEOs a competitive salary, they will just go to another company.” Except a significant amount of the time, CEOs will receive bonuses simply because they came in and fired a bunch of workers. Plus, who sets the wages for these CEOs? Certainly not the shareholders, the actual owners of the company.

Furthermore, according to the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), “executive pay overall remains far above inflation-adjusted levels of years past. In fact, after adjusting for inflation, CEO pay in 2009 more than doubled the CEO pay average for the decade of the 1990s, more than quadrupled the CEO pay average for the 1980s, and ran approximately eight times the CEO average for all the decades of the mid-20th century.”

In contrast, American workers are taking home less in real wages than they did almost 40 years ago. In the 1970s, top executives rarely made more than 30 times that of the average worker. For the 17th annual Executive Excess in 2009, IPS calculated that CEOs of major U.S. corporations averaged 263 times the average compensation of American workers. They must be doing something right in firing all these employees.

Not according to Germany’s statistics. Germany currently has a 7 percent unemployment rate, which is significantly less than the U.S.’s and is touted by the media as the reason for Germany’s overall relative economic health. For some reason though, the fact that government incentives are the leading contributor to the higher employment numbers automatically translates to disaster in the eyes of the American media machine.

So, let’s get this straight. Fewer people in Germany are experiencing financial hardship because companies are rewarded for retaining their workers during a slowdown. This allows for the public to continue working, spending, saving, investing and engaging in all manners of economic activity. And this is bad policy? But a stimulus, directed only at the financial industry that did not lead to relatively lower unemployment or increased economic activity, is just fine?

America, we really need to re-prioritize our policies and rehash the way we view the role of the corporation. Should we really exist to serve them, or is it about time they exist to serve everyone?

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