Post #1593804

2026-04-22 16:13 UTC

I did some 'back of the napkin' math a few days ago to see what it would take for the employees in my company to purchase enough shares for a controlling stake in the company. I figured that we'd never get 100% of the employees to buy in, but we also don't need 100% of the shares, so to keep it easy I calculated if 60% bought 60% of the shares... and it would cost each employee around $2.3 million. That tells me that each employee provides $2.3 million worth of value to the company... and we're not getting paid anywhere near that. Not even close.

Replies (7)

@merdaverse@lemmy.world 2026-04-23 17:07

> each employee provides $2.3 million worth of value Market cap is just the value at which shares are sold on the market, not necessarily the actual value of the company. It implies a lot speculation for investors on how much they expect to gain from the ownership. The company equity/net worth is a more accurate indicator. What you're calculating is the accumulated value in time, not yearly. If you want the ratio of generated value to wages paid, it's hard to accurately calculate with just public data, but you can approximate it so: in a given year, take the operating income and divide it by the number of employees. Operating income accounts for overhead expenses like SG&A (Sales General & Admin), which includes things that you can argue are useless (like wages for execs, middle management, and sales), but they also include admin costs like office rents, etc. Then you also have to find the average/median wage of a worker at the company, so the total is: yearly value created by a worker = (operating income / n. of workers) + median wage You can also do a quick calculation using this tool: https://yourfairshare.info/ It's interesting to note how in all of these top companies, for every 1$ paid to workers, another ~1$ is transferred to capitalists through dividends and buybacks.

Open ##1593816
@Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 2026-04-23 02:10

Why is this highly upvoted? This is just a poor understanding of economics. The market cap just shows the aggregate value of shares that are being publicly traded. It has nothing to do with labor value. You can't derive labor value from the market cap because there's no correlation. If you want to find out how much each employee contributes, you would have to use something like company revenue.

Open ##1593817
@Zwiebel@feddit.org 2026-04-22 19:08

Company value is just the result of shareholders expectations for the future company value. It doesn't directly reflect the employees worth

Open ##1593818
@GorGor@startrek.website 2026-04-22 17:42

this is interesting to me. can you show your work? Id be interested in going through the thought experiment as well.

Open ##1593819
@Steve@startrek.website 2026-04-22 18:45

Market cap doesnt reflect the value of labor, its purely speculative these days.

Open ##1593820
@mech@feddit.org 2026-04-22 16:57

So get to shitposting!

Open ##1593821
@Samskara@sh.itjust.works 2026-04-22 19:07

You should subtract initial investments in the company, value of real estate owned, value of machines etc.

Open ##1593822