Oh no ... it did work ... it worked spectacularly ... for the top wealthiest people in the world
They figured out that they could cut the amount of taxes they had to pay, collect even more wealth for themselves and convince everyone around them and all the poor people out there like you and me that it was all perfectly acceptable, and sensible and that we should all keep electing government officials to keep that system going while we all paid for it. The wealthiest figured out how they could keep their money and make us all pay for it. And they did it for 50 years. And they're still doing it.
I agree ... but the problem is ... it took 50 years for us to get to this point and it will probably take 50 years or longer to get it back to a manageable level again. That is, if we take 50 years of consistently pushing back against the wealthy in the same way that the wealthy have been pressing the poor for the past 50 years.
How about we try some trickle up economics for a while? That's where you give money to people who actually need it, and let businesses compete for them as customers, and the revenue will trickle up to successful companies.
The biggest criticism is hilarious. They say poor people don't use the money responsibly. It just passes right through their hands. They neglect to mention that's because they're buying needed goods and services and that money trickles up far more reliably than money trickles down.
As long as he said sorry to God before he died and meant it, in Christianity, he's in heaven.
Same goes for Hitler, if he meant it.
If you have a problem with that, no matter how perfect a person you might be, you'll be in hell instead because, ultimately, it doesn't matter how bad of a person you are or what sins you've committed.
Only one thing matters.
If heaven exists, it'll be full of people like Reagan. You'll be spending eternity with right wing Christian Conservatives and much, much worse.
Meanwhile hell will have all the drinkers, the stoners, the ravers, revelers and rascals; it'll have all the gay people, the hippies and every alternative culture you can think of. Hell will have all the promiscuous people, the people who just love sex and the professionals too. We'll have all the people who know how to make drugs, the fun ones, and we'll have none of those judgmental life-haters around, either as they'll all be in heaven.
Were gonna have a wicked time. Reagan won't be welcome, no matter who's arsehole he's got his tongue up.
Wealth isn't held, or taxed, in income.
Taxes on the wealthy are dodged or gamed away. Cut them or raise them, the actual wealth won't be targeted through income.
Looks great but it always comes down to the details. The Trump tax “cuts” were a spiteful attack on high tax, high cost of living “liberal” states by capping the deduction for state and local taxes. Yay double taxation. Yay higher taxes because a different part of government takes more. Yay using government regulation out of spite
Of course it didn't work, but only because we didn't give it 150 more years! I promise guys, really, just 180 more years and it will slightly trickle down! It's been scientifamicbly proven that in just 230 more years it will absolutely start to work!
-Study paid for by the fuck you I got mine, but I want yours too foundation.
And they used that money as a cudgel to make political bribery perfectly legal in Citizens United, as if it wasn't already rampant. They own this fucking place above board now.
We get a vote on how to, or if we even should address the social issue symptoms of our oligarch class rigging the economic game, ie who to blame or what to spend on the ever dwindling crumbs left for the Commons.
We don't get a vote on the economy itself, that's above our paygrade. From Pelosi to McConnell, "herp derp the free market we're bribed to rig for capital is working just fine... For our portfolios! 🤣"
It's all the generations getting robbed, it's just that each successive generation gets shafted worse than the one before. Grandma didn't steal your retirement, the oligarchs did.
Is this going to be like UBI studies, where the news pretends every one of hundreds of studies is the one that is breaking this news for the first time? My economics professor was taking the piss out of supply side economics over a decade ago.
Endorsement of trickle-down is usually made for the same reason as criticisms of UBI... Conservative voters are ignorant of the concept of elasticity in economics, and their politicians know it.
Not to mention that economics education is even worse than civics education. At best someone who went to college might have gotten a 100 level microeconomics course as part of their degree. But I don't know of any school that teaches about money beyond maybe how to set a budget. If you're lucky.
When normal people talk about "the economy" it's largely based on their own bank account and how they feel other people are doing in comparison to some subjective standard, not anything to do with actual economics. This is why we keep having to raise the debt ceiling and politicians talk about it like it's getting another credit card.
Some people are either unaware or like being trickled upon. Somehow there still seems to be widespread support for tax cuts to the wealthy. Somehow people seem to remember “tax cut” while either being unaware or not remembering whose taxes were cut. Somehow they already forgot when Warren Buffet made a big deal of his tax rate being lower than his secretary’s and that we should fix that. As recently as this summer I found someone surprised that the Trump tax “cuts” increased my taxes
The goldfish memory of news organizations doesn't help. If they reported this accurately it would be, "Another Study Confirms Trickle Down Doesn't Work"
No. It doesn't seem to me that the article pretends this one study is breaking any news for the first time. It cites other studies and individuals that have expressed the same idea for a long time. Possibly this is the first rigorous study of the 50 years from 1965 to 2015, I dunno.
This is what's before the fold. Combined with the headline, most people are not going to come away with the sense that this is a long known thing.
Tax cuts for the wealthy have long drawn support from conservative lawmakers and economists who argue that such measures will "trickle down" and eventually boost jobs and incomes for everyone else. But a new study from the London School of Economics says 50 years of such tax cuts have only helped one group — the rich.
The new paper, by David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King's College London, examines 18 developed countries — from Australia to the United States — over a 50-year period from 1965 to 2015. The study compared countries that passed tax cuts in a specific year, such as the U.S. in 1982 when President Ronald Reagan slashed taxes on the wealthy, with those that didn't, and then examined their economic outcomes.
When it does get into it below the fold it talks about the pandemic. When it could talk about how we've known this for literal decades. (I love the second one. It's six years after Reagan is elected and written by a pro-trickle down economist whose having to move the goal posts to keep defending it.)
Yeah, no shit. Something anyone remotely educated on the topic has known since the policies went into place. The problem isn't that the information wasn't there, it's that no one with enough power to benefit from it is willing to do anything about it.
It's by design. But in a serious country, serious world, or amongst serious people, we would've been laughing at the "Laffer curve" the moment Laffer ejaculated it into the napkin he first wet dreamed it upon.
But instead because we're both as laughable as the curve itself and because the rich, industrial asshats in this country were foaming at the mouth for a thin, arguably objective, seemingly mathematical piece of horseshit to cover their "steal from the poor and give to the rich" policy preferences, reproductions of Arthur's ejaculate was disseminated like it was the fucking Mona Lisa.
It should never be said that conservatives are conservative in the normal, adjective sense of the word. For the last fifty years, they've been tearing at the fraying seams of society and have been using "trickle down economics" as their seam ripper, while simultaneously blaming anything and everything other than their objectively horrific policies for the havoc wreaked.
Oh, the laffer curve is just fine. The issue is, the people who choose to missuse it deliberately or through utter ignorance never mention that the X value is about 90%. As I always say to those types whenever they bring it up:
"Theh all want to talk about the laffer curve, right up until you have to explain to them how hight the X value is. Then, as if by magic, they suddenly don't want to talk about it anymore and never agreed with it in the first place."
The real problem with economics, imo, is that they always presume inequality to not exist, in order to make the calculations work. The reason being that, if you accept that inequality exists and add it to the pot, as it were, the answer always comes out as "the problem is inequality."
However, that doesn't justify tax breaks for the rich or their rampant greed and exploitation. So, we pretend its non-existent and, tbf, in a wold with no inequality what so ever, where only the best rise to the top and anyone could be rich, if they worked for it and it wasn't a closed shop, most of neoliberalism would be absolute genius.
Of course, the problem is that, in the real world, inequality not only exists but is the definining feature of our economy.
What do you mean, corporations that have a legal obligation to maximize value for shareholders weren't passing money on to consumers out of the goodness of their hearts? Nobody could have seen that coming! /S
We have proof that Jesus Christ at least existed and was put to death by a Roman Leader named Pontious Pilate, we have no proof he was actually divine.
This means there is more proof for Christianity than "Give the ravenous gluttons who want for nought more pie and somehow the starving children will be fed." aka Trickle Down
I'll never understand how this image wasn't ridiculed from the start.
I mean if you are talking about "trickling down", wouldn't the bottom be the place where the thing that is trickling down collects?
Of course money trickles down, it trickles down from the poor to rich.
It was but everyone was hypnotized by that POS. People who criticized it when I was a kid were considered socialist. It was/is a backward southern town. These days its just another small methville.
People should be always taxed more depending on how much more they make starting at 500,000$ a year for a single person imo. Once you hit that threshold you're far above a normal human....far above.
XKCD: Todays 10000 is just as relevant for this topic as it is for mentos and diet pop.
we should not stop bringing this up until it isnt relevant anymore. Which isnt going to be in my life time, likely, so you people everywhere who are either just reaching a point in your life where this IS news to you, or you have people in your circles that havent got the message yet, this seems like a good report to reference.
It's not enough to know or believe a thing.
It's being able to get that info the heads of people who don't know or haven't accepted it yet, by hook or crook, that we must be diligent for and this article, helps us do that.
Don't be only be bitter and cynical, if you are, also be part of the needed majority of people who will champion the bed to take down this flawed policy. Even if you only carry the torch to pass on to those that come after us.
It's s fight with fighting. Spread the knowledge don't make people feel bad for not already knowing this or believing it. Maybe this is the straw that breaks the supply side camels back
Reagan, both Bush's, Clinton, Obama, Trump, and even to some extent Carter. It's been a long dirty project. President Biden is the first to even start the project of reversing the wealth transfer, though it's worth mentioning that Senator Biden was as bad as any president on this score.
I will never get why it is the most well off of us that they give the tax cuts too. I mean, other than bribery of course. Even if it did work, how long were they supposed to wait? "I know little Timmy needs braces, and you can't afford to feed them them, but just wait a little longer! Musk is almost done with dicking around with the election. I'm sure it'll trickle down then!"
I remember Ross Perot talking about the lack of trickle-down back in the 90s, but he was old, had funny big ears, showed a lot of confusing charts and was a billionaire, so why listen to him.
My understanding this was known in the economics circles in 1980s too but people were able to make careers shilling the lie since owner class favor them.