Mark Cuban: fight inequality by giving all workers company stock

blinkbat

good on cuban, a good start. but we're still going to need that UBI.

ozgrakkurt

I don't think this solves anything regarding proportionality of how the economic development is distributed. It has to be proportional to the amount of contribution poeple are doing instead of being proportional to how much already they have. Or at least the slider needs to be moved toward that direction. So wages need to be higher (taxed less) and wealth should be taxed to force asset prices down. Giving people stock obviosly does none of these things. It ties wealth more to assets (stocks) so it will make stock (asset) prices higher which means working people will get poorer compared to richer people. It should be possible to do a decrease in wage (concrete income) tax by putting a tax on wealth in a resonable way. This can also be balanced for older people by boosting pension payment in a way so they don't get overly effected by this in case they have all their money on their home.

jelder

This sounds an awful lot like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip , which has been illegal for a long time and for good reason.

minorj47

He’s promoting a way to actually implement trickle down economics. Though I would argue it would probably be better for those workers if the company stock they would be given was sold and that money was converted into a pension fund that was required to maintain a diverse investment portfolio.

burnt-resistor

He's rediscovered employee-owned co-ops but to a lesser degree.

prirun

To limit inequality, cap the CEO's total compensation to 100x (or whatever) the lowest-paid workers' compensation. Google says: "at the 100 publicly traded U.S. companies with the lowest median worker pay, this ratio (CEO to worker pay) is much higher, averaging 632 to 1. Also: "From 1978 to 2024, inflation-adjusted CEO pay grew over 1,094%, while typical worker compensation increased by only 26%"

Wertulen

It would improve equity, sure, but a potentially larger impact would be that when "increasing value for shareholders" the shareholders in question are also the employees. It's a lot easier winning a fight against short-term profit taking when a significant portion of the shareholders are figuratively and literally invested in making long-term choices.

garciasn

ESOPs have minted many a paper millionaire. I work for one and it’s a retirement vehicle that’s been often, but not always, outperforming the S&P in our case. We get ESOP shares as well as 401K match; double the retirement.

jsLavaGoat

Works in Mondragon.

duxup

So when the company has trouble the employees are potentially out of a job and their stock drops? This seems like an eggs in one basket situation.