On Veteran’s Day, November 11, in 2025, the Wall Street Journal published my op ed on how progressive companies are solving the inequality problem by offering employees stock options and other profit-sharing plans with its workers.  This policy fulfills Peter Drucker’s goal that the large corporation has become “the representative nonrevolutionary social institution.” I’ve had more response from this op ed in the Wall Street Journal than any other I’ve written.  Feel free to share.  – Mark Skousen

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Share the Wealth, Don’t Redistribute It

Workers become wealthy thanks to 401(k)s, stock ownership plans and stock-option grants.

Socialism is in vogue again. Critics of capitalism call the market economy unfair, arguing that big corporations don’t pay low-income employees a living wage. They draw on studies showing that inequality has grown dramatically in both income and wealth. Their solution: a highly progressive income tax, or even a wealth tax, on the superrich, and a minimum wage of $20 an hour or more.

These economically destructive measures are unnecessary and would disrupt the positive changes happening in capital-labor relations. The private sector is quietly solving the inequality problem without more redistribution and wage controls.

How? Companies both large and small offer generous profit-sharing programs for employees—401(k) plans, stock options and discounted stock-purchase plans.

Fidelity recently reported that there are more 401(k) millionaires on its platform than ever before. More than half a million Americans have at least $1 million in Fidelity 401(k) plans. In 2025 retirement plans marked a milestone—thanks to the growth of 401(k)s and other defined-contribution instruments, more than half of private-sector workers are actively contributing to an employer-sponsored retirement plans.

Stock programs are also making workers wealthy. Pitt Hyde founded car-parts retailer AutoZone in 1979. Forbes lists Mr. Hyde as one of the 400 wealthiest people in America, and AutoZone’s top executives are multimillionaires. More than 4,000 lower-level AutoZone employees have become millionaires too.

AutoZone offers stock discounts, options and matching 401(k) contributions to its 125,000 employees. Executives and key employees (including store managers) get stock options, and all U.S.-based employees can buy company stock at a 15% discount. AutoZone matches an average of 4% of income if an employee contributes at least 5% of his income to his 401(k) plan.

In the past 20 years, the company has returned an average annualized gain of 21%, double the S&P 500. All employees benefit one way or another.

Mr. Hyde says, “I started with this philosophy: Everybody wants to be part of a winning team.” Chairman Bill Rhodes adds, “Our compensation structure is one of the key elements of our success.”

AutoZone isn’t exceptional among large corporations. From the beginning, Bill Gates offered Microsoft employees stock options, so that by 2005 an estimated 12,000 rank-and-file employees had become millionaires. In 2003 Microsoft replaced its stock-option plan with restricted stock units, which grow in value when the stock goes up. The company’s stock value has increased tenfold in 10 years, not counting dividends. It also offers all employees a 10% discount on stock and matches half of 401(k) contributions, up to nearly $12,000 a year.

Today I estimate that more than 30,000 Microsoft employees, from secretaries to janitors, have become millionaires.

Home Depot is another example. Employees receive performance bonuses twice a year if they achieve their individual company goals. They also share in profit through discounted stock offers and their matching FutureBuilder 401(k) plans.

Co-founder Ken Langone told a reporter, “We decided everyone had to have skin in the game. We made certain that each of the four founders, including myself, would never own more than 5% of the company. The remaining shares would be owned by the public or the employees. We now have more than 3,000 associates who started pushing carts back into the store from the parking lot who are now millionaires. If there’s a better example of how capitalism works, you’ll have to show me.”

Or consider Nvidia. According to a recent Benzinga report, the tech company is producing “unprecedented wealth” for its 36,000 employees. Nearly 80% are already millionaires, with nearly half reporting a net worth exceeding $25 million.

CEO Jensen Huang highlighted the company’s practice of rewarding talent with stock and reiterated his belief in empowering small, highly skilled teams. “You take care of people and everything else takes care of itself,” he said.

According to the National Center for Employee Ownership, more than 12,000 U.S. companies currently share ownership with more than 25 million employees, and that number is increasing. The reasons for adopting profit-sharing plans vary, as do the benefits they offer.

The number one way Americans become multimillionaires isn’t through timely real estate purchases, being early investors in startups, or being paid a living wage. The formula is much simpler: consistent buying of company shares and stock indexes, usually in the form of automatic contributions from every paycheck into a retirement account, or by receiving bonuses through company stock deals.

Management guru Peter Drucker said it best: Large corporations are living up to his goal of being “the representative nonrevolutionary social institution,” and in most cases are far superior to plans by governments, charities and nonprofits to serve the retirement, medical and other social needs of their employees.

Highly profitable firms are visionaries. Democratic socialism is all about taxing successful entrepreneurs and running out of other people’s money; democratic capitalism is all about increasing profit margins, sharing the wealth and growing prosperous together.

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Mr. Skousen holds a chair in free enterprise at Chapman University. His latest book is “The Greatest American: Benjamin Franklin, the World’s Most Versatile Genius.”