Trickle Down Salaries


Most government programs, non-profits, and for-profit corporations are tackling income inequality through a bottom-up approach: creating social services to help those most in need, whether it’s UBI or Medicaid and donating to reputable charities and organizations like food banks or the ACLU. While important, these programs work to ensure a bare-minimum quality of life in a developed country, while ever so slightly improving a person’s chance of achieving the American Dream. The programs address the symptoms of poverty, but do little to overcome the barriers for an individual to excel in America, and rise from the bottom 10% to the top 10%. The data shows it’s clearly not enough, as the income inequality gap is only getting worse. Therefore, I propose a top-down approach, to address income inequality, Trickle Down Salaries.

Trickle Down Salaries is simple in concept. Companies can improve the income earning potential of socio-economically disadvantaged minorities by paying them more, a lot more. To implement TDS, a company would have a number of highly paid, TDS positions, think 10x the market rate, for diverse hires. The key is that the targeted positions would focus on mid-level roles (i.e. 3-5 years of industry experience), not C-suite executives that are already successful. 


Imagine a mid-level engineer that starts earning $1M a year. By propelling their income to the top 1%, you’ve accelerated the pace of change to fight income inequality. The impact is immediate and no longer theoretical, the individual is in the top income bracket. These high earners can pay off debt, fully provide for their family, and have leftover money to reinvest in their community and build wealth. After a few years, high earners would (most likely) move on, starting their own companies, spreading knowledge, hiring more diversely, and creating similar opportunities for others. 


TDS would have compounding network effects, because unlike trust-fund kids and legacy admissions, TDS positions are earned, not inherited. The TDS employee is still an employee, and must meet performance expectations, or risk losing their job. It’s not charity.


The company also benefits. TDS roles would be highly sought-after positions. Even if the company could only afford one TDS role, the knowledge of the program would attract a constant stream of highly motivated and skilled applicants and bring a boon to the company’s reputation and workforce.


A similar idea has been discussed in VC land, why not provide 100,000 people $25k to start their own company? While I agree that this could be much more impactful than traditional social services, the difference is that success is not guaranteed; 90% of startups fail, and it takes an average of over 7 years for a startup to be successful. With TDS, there’s actual, not potential, impact right away, and it scales by leveraging already successful companies. For society, this could be the great income equalizer, cutting down the time to build wealth from generations to a few years. 


The U.S. has over indexed on subsistence programs for the disenfranchised. It’s time to invest in maximizing a person’s future. And what better way than funding it through the most profitable corporations?

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