Mark Cuban believes one strong approach to addressing income inequality involves giving workers ownership in the firms they help create.

On an episode of the What It Takes podcast from Unmoderated News that aired Thursday, the billionaire said every staff member, from top executives down to support roles, should receive company shares. He also suggested adjusting tax rules to promote this practice across businesses.

I would like to see it so that every single CEO, founder, and entrepreneur follows what I did by granting equity to every employee, Cuban stated.

The Cost Plus Drugs founder and former Dallas Mavericks majority owner has promoted this view consistently over many years.

He has urged firms to distribute more gains to staff and noted he issued bonuses after each company sale, which allowed roughly 300 Broadcast.com workers to become millionaires following the 1999 Yahoo acquisition.

The idea surfaces as the pay divide between leaders and employees continues to grow. Recent data from Oxfam and the International Trade Union Confederation showed CEOs at major global firms saw an 11 percent real-terms compensation increase in 2025, while typical worker pay rose only 0.5 percent.

In the United States, S and P 500 CEO pay rose 25.6 percent between 2024 and 2025, against a 1.3 percent real-terms gain in average hourly earnings for private-sector staff.

During the Thursday podcast, Cuban noted that equity sharing stands out as the best method to shrink wealth gaps since employees gain directly from company success.

The way to reduce income inequality for anyone working with others is to ensure they receive stock shares and then benefit from them, he said.

When host Sarah McCammon pointed out that Cuban's own equity grants were voluntary, he replied that government policy could steer leaders the same way by offering lower corporate tax rates to firms that spread equity widely.

You can provide incentives by saying that if you want that 21 percent tax rate, then you must give every employee the same percentage in stock warrants, options, or similar forms relative to their cash pay as the CEO receives, he explained.

He gave an example: if a CEO gets stock equal to 10 percent of cash compensation, all other workers should receive stock at the same ratio of their own pay.

So if the CEO receives 100000 dollars in stock on a 1 million dollar cash salary, and the janitor earns 50000 dollars, then that person should get the same percentage in stock, which would shift the dynamic, Cuban said.

Firms that skip this step could see their tax rates rise instead, he added.

Cuban's emphasis on broad stock grants aligns with remarks from Elon Musk after SpaceX went public. In a July radio interview, Musk noted he has long favored letting employees share in company gains through ownership.

I have always held the view that everyone at the company should receive stock so they can take part in the upside, he told Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

SpaceX competitor Blue Origin is also rolling out a more generous equity plan to ease staff concerns about its options program. Yet as reported Thursday, the plan includes a condition that workers lose all options if they join a rival within 18 months of departure.