“Talk rather than pay” came with MBA-style management in the 1980s along with thing like calling employees “human resources”.
There was a period not that long ago when this kind of stuff was very visible as ridiculously over-inflated job titles (but not pay) in Tech Companies and I did know quite a lot of people when I was in Startups who had job titles which were way above their actual responsabilities or simply ridiculous (whilst I, as a freelancer, just got paid very well and didn’t really had a job title).