The writers and actors union currently on strike in Hollywood have made a big issue out of the extravagant pay packages enjoyed by the studio heads they're fighting.
"If they don't have any money to give us raises, then how did they — the executives in the C-suite — amass such record salaries?" Mike Royce, a striking writer and showrunner of Netflix's "One Day at a Time" reboot, asked my Times colleagues covering the strike. "The difference between CEO pay and worker pay has never been greater in most industries, but in this industry it's even worse."
Royce is half right. It's true that the gap between executive and median worker pay, as measured by ratios that public companies have had to disclose since 2017 and by surveys dating back several decades, has never been wider.
