Record Profits Are Unpaid Wages Magnet

Profit-sharing with regular employees all but disappeared in large US corporations. Ever since the early 1980s when corporate “raiders” (now private-equity managers) began demanding high returns, corporations stopped granting employees shares of stock, presumably because they didn’t want to dilute share prices. Sears phased out its profit-sharing plan in the 1970s. Yet, just as profit-sharing with regular employees disappeared, profit-sharing with top executives took off, as big Wall Street banks, hedge funds, private equity funds, and high-tech companies began doling out huge wads of stock and stock options to their MVPs.