Why do CEOs get paid so much?

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1965, the ratio of CEO-to-average-worker compensation was 21:1. In 2020, that number had skyrocketed to 351:1. One listener wondered: “How has that gap grown so wide?” We answer that, plus why gas prices list the tenth of a cent and if unlimited vacation is all it’s cracked up to be on this Whaddya Wanna Know Wednesday.

Here’s everything we talked about on the show today:

CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,322% since 1978: CEOs were paid 351 times as much as a typical worker in 2020 from the Economic Policy Institute
In 2020, top CEOs earned 351 times more than the typical worker from CNBC
CEO pay jumped 16% last year, while workers saw just a 1.8% gain from Fortune
Alphabet grants tens of millions of dollars in stock awards to top execs from MSN
Why do gas prices end in 9/10 of a cent? from Marketplace
Why unlimited vacation isn’t all it seems from Marketplace
Companies with unlimited PTO are forcing their employees to take it from Protocol
Will the pandemic make the U.S. more of a vacation nation? from Marketplace

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, it's Kai.
0:03.8	You know, it's been an unpredictable year, but there is one thing you can count on.
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0:38.4	Let's do it.
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0:46.6	Hello, I'm Maryl Sagarra.
0:51.6	Welcome back to Make Me Smart where we make today make sense.
0:55.2	Thanks for joining us.
0:57.2	And I am Megan McCarty Karina.
0:59.4	It's Wednesday.
1:00.4	That means it is what do you want to know Wednesday?
1:03.0	It's the day that we like to answer some of your questions that you've sent us throughout
1:07.1	the week.
1:08.1	So thanks for sending those in.
	...

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