Elon Musk, the space and electric-car titan who was the highest-paid executive in the U.S. for 2019 with US$595.3 million, according to the Bloomberg Pay Index.
By comparison, the salary of Apple’s Tim Cook looks paltry by comparison. He only made $133.7 million last year. Rounding out the top 10: Tom Rutledge, Charter Communications ($117 million), Joseph Ianniello, ViacomCBS ($116 million), Sumit Singh, Chewy ($108 million), Jonathan Gray, Blackstone Group ($108 million), Robert Swan, Intel ($99 million), Sundar Pichai, Alphabet ($86 million), Satya Nadella, Microsoft ($77 million), and Douglas Ingram, Sarepta Therapeutics ($70 million).
“While excessive compensation might be most dangerous at Wall Street firms because of the systemic risk, sky-high pay throughout corporate America encourages many types of socially and environmentally damaging behavior,” said Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. “And in many sectors, like tech, I think it has largely gotten a pass.”
