Mark Cuban says one of the best ways to address income inequality is to give workers a stake in the companies they help build.

In an episode of Unmoderated News’ “What It Takes” podcast released Thursday, the billionaire businessman said every employee, from the CEO to the janitor, should receive stock in the company. He also proposed using the tax code to encourage businesses to do so.

“I would like every CEO/founder/entrepreneur to do what I did, which was give equity to every employee,” Cuban said.

Cuban, founder of Cost Plus Drugs and former majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has been making the same argument for years.

He has repeatedly asked companies to share more of their success with employees and has said he has paid bonuses after each sale of the company, helping about 300 Broadcast.com employees become millionaires when Yahoo bought the company in 1999.

The proposal comes amid a growing income gap between executives and workers. Oxfam and the International Trade Union Confederation found that CEOs of the world’s largest companies enjoyed an 11% pay rise in real terms in 2025, while average worker pay rose by just 0.5%.

In the United States, S&P 500 CEO pay rose 25.6% between 2024 and 2025, compared to a 1.3% real-term increase in average hourly earnings for private sector workers.

On Thursday’s episode of the “What It Takes” podcast, he said that sharing capital is the most effective way to reduce wealth inequality because employees directly benefit when the companies they work for succeed.

“The way to reduce income inequality for anyone who works with anyone is to make sure they get shares and then benefit,” he said.

When host Sarah McCammon pointed out that Cuban’s own equity stake was voluntary, she argued that the government could nudge CEOs in the same direction through the tax code, rewarding companies that spread equity widely with lower corporate tax rates.

“You can give them incentives to say, ‘Look, if you want that 21% tax rate, then you need to give each employee the same percentage in stock warrants, options, whatever, of their cash compensation that you give to the CEO,'” he said.

He illustrated the idea with an example: If a CEO receives shares worth 10% of his cash compensation, employees should receive shares worth the same proportion as theirs.

“So if the CEO gets $100,000 in stock because he makes $1 million in cash, and the janitor makes $50,000, then they deserve, you know, the same percentage in stock, and that will change the game,” Cuban said.

Companies that don’t take this approach, he added, could face higher taxes.

“And if you don’t do it, then your taxes will go up again,” he said.

Cuban’s calls for employees to receive stock echo comments made by Elon Musk in the wake of SpaceX’s initial public offering. In a radio appearance in early July, Musk said he always wanted his employees to benefit from the success of their companies.

“I’ve always had the philosophy that everyone in the company should receive stock in the company, so they can share in the benefits of the company,” he told Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

SpaceX’s big rival Blue Origin is also introducing a new, more generous capital scheme to address internal dissent over its options program. However, as Business Insider’s Tom Carter reported Thursday, there’s a catch: Employees will lose all of their stock options if they join a competitor within 18 months of leaving Blue Origin.