Mark Cuban: fight inequality by giving all workers company stock
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Re: Mark Cuban: fight inequality by giving all workers company stock
#2good on cuban, a good start. but we're still going to need that UBI.
Re: Mark Cuban: fight inequality by giving all workers company stock
#3good on cuban, a good start. but we're still going to need that UBI.
The mechanics of implementing UBI is relatively straightforward. Have the Fed buy up securities, ban stock buybacks to force dividends, issue FedAccounts to everyone entitled to a government backed deposit account, payments land in the account either monthly or bi weekly as an option. Tada. UBI. Just like social security payments, but funded by the profits of all concerns required to issue stock to enable some portion of their gains to be redistributed to the citizen population. It’s simply a corporate tax, just a different implementation.
Will it ever get done? I wouldn’t hold my breath. “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
As another comment in this thread says, just push wages up. That’s a short term fix that would pay off immediately for workers broadly.
Tripling US union membership would shift $1.2T to workers annually - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/15/union-member... - July 15th, 2026
The case for tripling union membership - https://www.epi.org/publication/the-case-for-tripling-union-... - July 15th, 2026
Re: Mark Cuban: fight inequality by giving all workers company stock
#4I 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.
Re: Mark Cuban: fight inequality by giving all workers company stock
#5good on cuban, a good start. but we're still going to need that UBI.
UBI's have been tried repeatedly and have never worked. They have a bad incentive structure and are simply unaffordable. Unfortunately if you want money you will have to get a job
Re: Mark Cuban: fight inequality by giving all workers company stock
#6good on cuban, a good start. but we're still going to need that UBI.
The mechanics of implementing UBI is relatively straightforward. Have the Fed buy up securities, ban stock buybacks to force dividends, issue FedAccounts to everyone entitled to a government backed deposit account, payments land in the account either monthly or bi weekly as an option. Tada. UBI. Just like social security payments, but funded by the profits of all concerns required to issue stock to enable some portio…
...and goods produced overseas would need to be heavily tariffed. But that was roundly criticized so where does that leave us?
Re: Mark Cuban: fight inequality by giving all workers company stock
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
The mechanics of implementing UBI is relatively straightforward. Have the Fed buy up securities, ban stock buybacks to force dividends, issue FedAccounts to everyone entitled to a government backed deposit account, payments land in the account either monthly or bi weekly as an option. Tada. UBI. Just like social security payments, but funded by the profits of all concerns required to issue stock to enable some portio…
...and goods produced overseas would need to be heavily tariffed. But that was roundly criticized so where does that leave us?
There are items which the US cannot produce domestically where imports are unavoidable. Think coffee, for example. Someone smarter than I needs to figure out how to manage such trade deficits and surplus in this context. But the US can easily produce clean energy and mobility domestically at scale [1] (solar, wind, batteries, electric vehicles etc), it simply chooses not to. China builds lights out, automated robotic manufacturing, the US should too, considering population decline (leading to persistent labor shortages) [2] long into the future.
Manufacturing in the US has increased due to tariffs, but not manufacturing jobs [3] [4] [5]. Unionize all jobs, that's the point and how to get to living wages and better working conditions, because while some jobs can be outsourced, most on US soil cannot be.
[1] Ember Energy: China Cleantech Exports Data Explorer - https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e... (updated monthly)
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680794 (citations)
[3] US manufacturing jobs fall at fastest rate since the pandemic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48647324 - June 2026 (2 comments)
[4] The manufacturing sector is growing, but isn't adding jobs - https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/06/01/the-manufacturi... - June 1st, 2026
> “(They’re saying) we’re not being allowed to backfill people that are leaving, and it’s getting really, really hard for those remaining,” she said.
> The uptick in manufacturing is at least good for workers’ paychecks, but not so great for those looking to get hired, said labor economist Alí Bustamante at the University of New Orleans.
> “We’re seeing a jobless manufacturing rebound,” Bustamante said. “A lot of firms, they’re investing more in machines, more in overtime, expanding shifts. And we are probably going to see that in higher productivity per worker.”
> Remember, Trump’s tariffs were supposed to give domestic producers a competitive edge — leading to reshoring and more manufacturing jobs. Bustamante said that hasn’t happened.
> “The first year and a half of these tariffs during the second Trump administration, we can say pretty unequivocally there hasn’t been an employment rebound in manufacturing,” he said.
[5] A check-in on manufacturing jobs, one year since Trump's tariffs - https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/04/01/how-trumps-tari... - April 1st, 2026
(if you are beholden to the benevolence of companies to improve worker wages or conditions, you are going to be very sad; they will maximize for profits and productivity, whenever possible)
Re: Mark Cuban: fight inequality by giving all workers company stock
#8good on cuban, a good start. but we're still going to need that UBI.
The mechanics of implementing UBI is relatively straightforward. Have the Fed buy up securities, ban stock buybacks to force dividends, issue FedAccounts to everyone entitled to a government backed deposit account, payments land in the account either monthly or bi weekly as an option. Tada. UBI. Just like social security payments, but funded by the profits of all concerns required to issue stock to enable some portio…
> Will it ever get done? I wouldn’t hold my breath. “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
Well except that Mark Cuban is out here proposing the first steps towards the end of capitalism, namely collective worker ownership of the means of production, so I think that rather than quote Mark Fisher all over again, we have to understand why today's capitalist class are suddenly proving rhetorically amenable to certain steps towards socialism.
Re: Mark Cuban: fight inequality by giving all workers company stock
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
...and goods produced overseas would need to be heavily tariffed. But that was roundly criticized so where does that leave us?
There are items which the US cannot produce domestically where imports are unavoidable. Think coffee, for example. Someone smarter than I needs to figure out how to manage such trade deficits and surplus in this context. But the US can easily produce clean energy and mobility domestically at scale [1] (solar, wind, batteries, electric vehicles etc), it simply chooses not to. China builds lights out, automated robotic…
"More jobs" and "more productivity" are more-or-less opposite goals under capitalism.
Re: Mark Cuban: fight inequality by giving all workers company stock
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are items which the US cannot produce domestically where imports are unavoidable. Think coffee, for example. Someone smarter than I needs to figure out how to manage such trade deficits and surplus in this context. But the US can easily produce clean energy and mobility domestically at scale [1] (solar, wind, batteries, electric vehicles etc), it simply chooses not to. China builds lights out, automated robotic…
"More jobs" and "more productivity" are more-or-less opposite goals under capitalism.
Strongly agree. The TLDR is labor needs more power as soon as possible (think in QALYs), and capitalism has to be nerfed (which can take time, election cycles, and broad electorate turnover), if we want workers to have better lives and to fix wealth inequality in some capacity. Capitalism itself need not be eliminated, but the measure has become the target, with predictable suboptimal outcomes.
So, workers must unionize, where they can, as soon as possible while we work the kinks out of a socioeconomic system operating suboptimally. Otherwise, with all due respect, they’re fucked against paperclip maximizers whose focus is some combination of line go up, profits, and control over workers that enable said profits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
(I’m hopeful with rapid gains Democratic Socialists have been making recently, but there are decades of work ahead imho; think in systems)