The chief executive officers of America’s largest companies have enjoyed pay raises most years for decades. That was interrupted at some public corporations, as the COVID-19 pandemic caused some of them to agree to salary cuts due to a decline in earnings or large layoffs of their workers. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) data for corporate compensation in 2021 shows how sharp the reversal can be. Dozens of CEOs have pay packages that range into the tens of millions of dollars. The lowest-paid CEO in America, however, is also one of the world’s richest men: Warren Buffet.

America does have a tradition of the $1 CEO. Steve Jobs was paid only $1 each year from 1997 through 2011. Apple could have paid him more, and he could have claimed he was due much higher compensation. However, the $1 was meant to show that he was in the same boat as investors. He owned hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Apple shares. If the stock rose, he benefited along with the other shareholders.

Most other CEOs in the $1 club have been in the tech industry and have owned large parts of their companies. This club has included Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Jack Dorsey of Twitter.

Proxies, which show CEO and other top executive pay as required by the SEC, have been posted by most S&P 500 companies. MyLogIQ, which uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to sort and explore SEC data, has provided 24/7 Wall St. with compensation data for S&P 500 companies that have released their proxies.