Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who had a net worth of $10.2 billion at the time of writing, says all firms should address income inequality by awarding workers company stock.
According to Entrepreneur, in a recent episode of the What It Takes podcast, Cuban argued that every employee, from the janitor to the CEO, deserves a stake in the company they work for.
Cuban said, “I would like to see it so that every single CEO/founder/entrepreneur does what I did, which was to give equity to every single employee.”
Cuban helped launch Broadcast.com, an early internet streaming company that he eventually sold to Yahoo in 1999 for $4.8 billion.
Over the years, he has been vocal about his belief that employees should directly benefit from a company’s success.
In line with that philosophy, Cuban said he has paid out bonuses after every major sale he’s been part of, including the Broadcast.com deal, which reportedly turned around 300 employees into millionaires overnight.
What did Mark Cuban say?
On the podcast, Cuban explained that sharing equity is the best way to tackle wealth inequality because employees have a direct stake in the business. When the company they work for succeeds, they immediately benefit.
He said, “The way you’re going to reduce income inequality for anybody who works with somebody is making sure they get shares of stock, and then they benefit.”
Equity sharing
Cuban’s equity-sharing was something he did on his own, with no external prompting.
He said that the government could incentivize CEOs to adopt a similar tactic by using the tax code. Businesses that widely distribute equity could benefit from lower corporate tax rates.
Cuban suggested, “You can give them incentives to say, ‘Look, if you want that 21% tax rate, then you need to give every single employee the same percentage in stock warrants, options, whatever it may be, of their cash compensation that you give to the CEO.'”
He broke it down with a simple comparison: If a CEO’s stock bonus equals 10% of their salary, employees could get stock at that same rate.
So, if a CEO making $1 million in cash gets $100,000 in stock, then someone earning $50,000 should also receive stock equivalent to 10% of their pay. “That will change the game,” Cuban said.
Cuban has long advocated for companies giving employees stock options. He has also touted the transformative power of technology.
Earlier this year, he said in a post on X that AI agents, or virtual assistants that can autonomously complete tasks, could cut an hour from the average workday without reducing productivity.
