Salaries Are Counted in Money, Not in Participation in the Employer's Scheme
They nonchalantly and very confidently say, keep your money with us, it'll grow!
Some days ago we saw several articles greatly exaggerating GAFAM salaries by counting "stock" (and various other vacuous things) as money. To be clear, for companies to produce "stocks" or "shares" instead of actual money typically means double-dipping; it moreover helps lift the stock, typically at almost no expense to the company lifting its own stock (think buybacks).
I am often reminded that almost all major "Tech" companies now pay salaries in "stock/s". The companies tend to give workers several options in terms of payment methods, with more "funny" money (not real money deposited in the bank) being encouraged, at least on paper, e.g. instead of 50k money + 50k stock it can be 25k money + 100k stock.
Is this a recipe for disaster? Yes. Yes, it is.
It's already bad enough that pension funds invest in a pyramid scheme and you have no say on it (cannot opt out) [1, 2] while wages don't keep up with inflation, certainly not because the employer is unable to afford the increments.
More and more people are nowadays encouraged to gamble their compensation and, not too surprisingly, they are encouraged to gamble their compensation on their own employer, i.e. effectively keep their "salaries" inside the bank account (as so-called "free cashflow") of the paymaster. This won't end well, but as long as enough people "keep doing it" it'll not "pop" so fast either. It's like a "run on the bank" scenario, where a bank can operate on almost nothing as long as there's no panic (or companies don't quite pay salaries, as the money stays with them, e.g. as alleged "investment" in the company).
Guess who knows when and how to "Exit" ("Dump") first; the people on top of the pyramid... the people who recruited current and past (historical) staff. █