They make the following specific arguments.

First, they contend that policies promoting employee ownership have strong public support and that these policies reflect the convictions of the founders, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Politicans on both sides of the partisan divide support ESOP proposals.

Senators from the left, including Democrats Ben Cardin of Maryland, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and senators from the right, including Republicans Roy Blunt of Missouri, Pat Roberts of Kansas and John Thune of South Dakota, are, for example, co-sponsors of the Promotion and Expansion of Private Employee Ownership Act of 2013.

As far back as 1974, Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, strongly endorsed the concept, telling Young Americans for Freedom that “capitalism can work to make everybody a ‘have.’ ” In an analysis reminiscent of Russell Long’s, Reagan said:

“Income, you know, results from only two things. It can result from capital or it can result from labor. If the worker begins getting his income from both sources at once, he has a real stake in increasing production and increasing output. One such plan is based on financing future expansion in such a way as to create stock ownership for employees. It does not reduce the holdings of the present owners, nor does it require the employees to divert their own savings into stock purchases.”

Second, Blasi, Freeman and Kruse point out that there are already extensive mechanisms in place for employee ownership, not only formal ESOPs but also a variety of profit-sharing plans. Because of this, they argue, major innovations are unlikely to be needed; improvements in existing laws and practices should suffice.

The authors cite responses to a question on employee ownership asked in a 2006 General Social Survey. The survey found that 47 percent of private-sector, full-time wage and salary workers now have access to some form of sharing in the firm where they work — cash profit sharing, cash gain sharing, employee stock ownership, employee stock options or ESOPs.

Third, and most important, is the authors’ claim that it is economically advantageous to give employees an ownership stake in the firm for which they work. Blasi, Freeman and Kruse provide evidence that employees with some form of worker ownership accumulate more savings than employees in nonparticipating firms and that firms with some form of capital sharing perform better in the competitive marketplace than those that do not.

They write that “workers with profit sharing or employee stock ownership are higher paid and have more benefits than other workers. This means that the substantial profit sharing and gain sharing and ownership stakes for the typical worker in these plans tend to come on top of, not in place of, fair fixed wages and benefits.”