Profit distribution only makes sense to owners of the company.
A better way to give employees a share of the profits is to give them shares of the company. But then that also comes at the expense of compensation in dollars. You cannot pay for groceries with company shares.
People really like the idea of "When you win, I get money, when you lose, you lose money". Explained like that they agree it's bad, but explained like "Companies should be distributing profits to workers" they fall over themselves about how good of an idea it is.
Running a business is a gamble and like gambling, you need to put skin in the game to get a share of winnings (and lose your skin in the losses). People are just hyper-focused on the winners.
If company X is making a profit and losing employees to a competitor paying more, then company X has effectively chosen to let that happen. They don’t get to complain that they ate their cake and don’t have it anymore.
> People really like the idea of "When you win, I get money, when you lose, you lose money". Explained like that they agree it's bad,
It's not bad, it's a cost.
You obviously wouldn't make a deal like that in isolation. You also wouldn't give someone a salary for nothing. But a cost like that can be worth paying just like a salary is worth paying. (Obviously you'd have limits on the numbers, just like salary is limited.)
People think that profits should be distributed on top of salary. And frankly it already happens to a degree with bonuses. But there is this pervasive idea that any leftover profit is just money that should have gone to workers.
Distributing part of the profits would be a reasonable benefit.
There are hundreds of millions of profits here. Distributing even 10% of that to employees would be a tremendous amount of money. Even a lot less would have a big effect.
A 10% profit share makes plenty of sense. Yes, even while insulating employees from losses, it still makes sense. Owners need to be able to reap profit but they don't need to get all of it forever. Employees owning stock is not the only way profit sharing can work.
A better way to give employees a share of the profits is to give them shares of the company. But then that also comes at the expense of compensation in dollars. You cannot pay for groceries with company shares.
People really like the idea of "When you win, I get money, when you lose, you lose money". Explained like that they agree it's bad, but explained like "Companies should be distributing profits to workers" they fall over themselves about how good of an idea it is.
Running a business is a gamble and like gambling, you need to put skin in the game to get a share of winnings (and lose your skin in the losses). People are just hyper-focused on the winners.