Employee shares in the United States are made up of employee share ownership plans
such as Employee Stock Ownership Plans, equity compensation plans based on restricted
stock units and performance shares, worker cooperatives, Employee Ownership Trusts,
Employee Stock Purchase Plans, employee stock option plans, and profit and gain
sharing plans. The ideas that citizens should enjoy widespread broad-based property
ownership and that a vibrant middle class based on such property ownership is central
to sustaining a democratic republic served as the ideological infrastructure for the development
of broad-based employee shares in the United States. Originally, the idea of many
Founders was to distribute land to insure this reality. Subsequently, the idea arose that
shares of property could be widely distributed based on shares of businesses or corporations
that had an unlimited supply. Businesses and workers developed various companybased
equity and profit and gain sharing plans. The us government subsequently gave
favorable tax treatment to these plans. This accounts for the widespread incidence of
share plans. The chapter evaluates how such plans are distributed in the us population
and the dollar value of such plans to citizens and discusses how the issue of excessive risk
to workers has been addressed.