An Opportunity to Build the Ownership Economy
It’s a sign of the times when the board of Tesla grants billionaire Elon Musk an eye-popping trillion-dollar pay package, even as New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, wins an election with rhetoric that includes a call to tax the rich.
“With wealth inequality reaching alarming new heights comes the question of what to do, and it’s another sign of the times when someone like billionaire Mark Cuban publicly calls for sharing wealth with workers.”
Responding to Oxfam’s news that billionaires’ wealth has increased by $33 trillion in a decade, Cuban went onto X to say it’s time that workers get a piece of that bounty, asking, “Why are we not giving incentives to companies to require them to give shares in their companies to all employees?”
As if on cue, Samsung, the global tech giant, recently announced it would award stock and bonuses to all workers—the first time it’s awarded stock to all staff, not just executives. Estimates by Fortune show this could amount to $20,000 for each of its 260,000 employees globally. The company’s move was a response to pressure from workers after its smaller rival, SK Hynix Inc. (provider to Nvidia) began giving 10 percent of annual profits to employees in bonuses in 2021.
Worker ownership as a form of broadly based capital ownership isn’t a new idea; worker cooperatives have been around for 250 years, and Ronald Reagan advanced employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) more than 40 years ago. But the tides have changed. Today, artificial intelligence threatens to further eviscerate labor, the political consequences of billionaire power are ever more apparent, and the greatest transfer of wealth in history is underway. And when even big capitalists like Cuban and globe-spanning firms like Samsung recognize capitalism isn’t working for workers, it’s clear a new cultural moment is opening—a moment when worker ownership might take on a new sheen of possibility and promise.