Why do CEOs make so much money now?

The wage gap between top CEOs and typical workers is widening. And Dan Toomey is the LONE MAN capable of informing the public about it.

Our guests for this episode are Josh Bivens, Chief Economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and Theo Francis, Special Writer at The Wall Street Journal covering executive compensation and corporate news.

Thumbnail design by Seth Laupus

Video by Dan Toomey and Henry Stockwell

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GOOD WORK ON ALL PLATFORMS: @goodworkmb
DAN ON IG: @dhtoomey

[GoodWorkMB]

Alright sickos, point of clarification: we're talking about "top CEOs" in this video, and we want to re-emphasize that. We got a lot of data from the Economic Policy Institute's annual report on executive pay, which focuses on the CEOs of the top 350 publicly traded companies in the U.S. We're talking about the leaders of the biggest and most powerful publicly traded companies in the country here, not about everyone who runs any sort of company—because those folks, of course, are hard-working Americans just trying to sell you a microwaved chicken pot pie to eat before you head over to the couch for some missionary and Monday Night Football.

[bobowon]

the biggest pain here is that a CEOs life barely changes when their compensation goes from 100 million to 200 million. But the average joes life is unbelievably transformed when they go from making 30k per year to 60k per year

[myfazu]

I asked 7 CEOs what's the secret to your success?, and they all said the same thing: How did you get in my house?

[ShannonMcCraryH]

Just remember the the CEO of Boeing who has not made a profit in his 5years in the role, has lead the company into multiple huge lawsuits and criminal fines, caused the death of over 300 people through budget and safety cuts, and which has resulted the stock bombing, STILL got a 46% pay increase last year.

[richardsousa]

My dad was a UPS man in the 70’s he told me a story of his coworker who would nickle and dime the company at every chance. He threw a fit about a shift being paid at 10 cents less than the hourly rate. My dad asked why he made such a big deal about 10 cents. He said, “if they take 10 cents a day from me every day that’s $1.20 dollars. What if they took a $1.20 from every employee in the company? That day? Who would even notice? And if you don’t notice they won’t give it back.”

[alternateVSNS]

do you think CEOs would share if we asked nicely

[gmanley]

This new host is devilishly handsome, unlike the regular host Mr. Tooney

[martti]

For all the business folk that actually believe that the “best and brightest” end up in CEO roles, do you actually have any evidence for this? My experience is that it’s really connections, luck (rich family) and (mostly) nepotism that leads to an executive title.

[CZJ]

CEO of my company is making 1.5 million a year. Plus over 20 million value in our company stock. We got a 1% a year raise averaged from 2016-2024

[Johnny-fwxj]

1. Ask your assistant to hire a team of consultants to do all the work
2. Profit
3. If it goes well, it was your brilliant idea in the first place to ask your assistant to hire a team of consultants
4. Profit
5. If it goes badly, deny any responsibility as it was your incompetent assintant who hired the wrong team of consultants
6. Profit
7. If it goes disastrously bad, accept the severance package
8. M-M-M-M-Monster Profit
9. Apply for another company
10. Repeat step one

[trepan]

Missing the doorhandle at 0:26 was a genius move to throw off potential CEO snipers Dan

[johndowe]

Don't forget that the board gets to use the CEO as the fall guy for any illegal or shitty things they do. The CEO doesn't care because they have enough money to retire after working for like 2 minutes

[asimpleguy]

I think the real problem of having compensation tied to the stock is not that it doesn't really reflect the performance, it's that it encourage short term gains instead of long term stability

[GoodWorkMB]

why hello, early crew. gotta say you look dashing

[daltonweidman]

I am an undergraduate economics student in my third year and although very trivial as I am not an experienced researcher, I wrote my most recent term paper (submitted last night) about the relationship between CEO compensation and firm performance (NOT stock performance) and found little to no connection. Meaning that yes CEO comp packages are wildly oversized and firms (and society) could benefit from a change in the use of resources. Again I am not an economist and I am not claiming to be 100% right I just happened to spend a lot of time on this topic for the last few months.

[TBathory]

No the people that get hurt are the employees, remember every time the CEO decides to layoff employees so that dividends go up for shareholders AND the CEO makes bank! Its almost never because the layoffs are really needed its because they want the large stock bump!

[sambeawesome]

Oh what, that was Dan Toomey the entire video? Man, the dude will go above and beyond to give us the scoop. Appreciate the Good Work, Dan, keep it up!

[Simbabweman]

What do CEOs do half the time? Ive witnessed a CEO of a massive comoany as she visited our office. She literally is always just doing visits, scripted interviews for the employees to watch later, training video clips and generally just stuff to make her and the company look good but i see almost no actual involvement in the actual company work.

Also ceos who are often on trial just cannot say out loud how much they make when theyre asked. Take the Boeing CEO recently, he is asked how much he makes and he says something like "thats well disclosed, you can see it in the proxy documents" so they ask him again what is it? He has the nerve to say "its a big number sir". So they say lemme help you out its $32.8 million does that sound right so he says "yes it does". They love to dodge the answer because you can tell theyre embarrassed to say it because they know its wrong, its too much, they could pay so many more unfairly treated employees, they could pay for so much more equipment and safety technology etc with even half of that salary but they are greedy.
He even says it was a 45% increase over last year then they ask him "what is it you get paid to do exactly?" And he says "i get paid to run the boeing company". Like come on! Thats not an answer. No one knows what ceos actually do, i think half the time they just play golf, take days off and then turn up to press events and company meet and greets just to look good meanwhile everyone underneath them does the actual work

[zipkitty]

If companies are "competing" to get the best and the brightest CEOs, why is mine so old and dumb?

[mrharvest]

3:55 The really scary thought is what if the CEOs of oil companies can affect the global price of oil. They would have a personal interest in starting global wars