Quick warning there is some profanity in this episode.
This is planet money from NPR Our CEOs paid too much a question you will hear often And let's just look at some random numbers here from a Harvard list of top paid CEOs.
We've got David Zaslov here of Warner Brothers Discovery.
Looks like he made $52 million in compensation last year.
We've got another David here,
David Gitlin of Carrier Global, the heating and air conditioning company.
He made $66 million last year.
Patrick Smith of Axon Enterprises, that's a company that makes tasers.
He made $165 million last year.
It was not always like this.
And so how did we get to this point where CEOs are making this much money?
Well, Jacob Goldstein and Stacey Vanek Smith did a show about this back in 2016,
about this one particular moment when all of a sudden, CEOs did start getting paid a lot more.
So we're going to play that one for you now.
And then at the end, we've got an update on what has changed in the decade since.
So here's Jacob and Stacey.
Stacey, the other day, I was looking at this chart.
I've brought it into the studio.
The chart is... average pay for CEOs at big US corporations over the past several decades.
And I saw something really surprising.