I learned something from this post. Previously, I would have said that trickle down economics doesn't work at all.
But that's not right. It has always worked as intended. Because it was always intended to benefit the rich and increase the wealth gap between them and everybody else.
Sort of. As in most cases it's a bit more nuanced than that, actually happened is that some economists came up with this totally swell idea, except they didn't live in the real world and never had, so it didn't work. Then once the rich upper classes realized how effective it was at giving them lots of money, they maintain the system.
There wasn't some grand conspiracy to implement it, all that happened was the rich being opportunistic and taking advantage of a broken system as per usual.
There wasn’t some grand conspiracy to implement it, all that happened was the rich being opportunistic and taking advantage of a broken system as per usual.
Does anybody truly believe that conservatives behind these programs believed they were giving free money to help out poor people? That goes directly against their usual platform.
In my opinion, the thing you're describing, where rich people convince politicians to give them money, while selling it as a way to make poor people wealthier, is a grand conspiracy, and the politicians were in on it.
It's obvious if you compare it to an actual alternative: Take the same money and instead of giving it to rich people, use it to help poor people start small businesses through grants, tax breaks, and discounted loans.
I think it couldn't be more blatantly obvious, but everybody is entitled to their own educated opinion.
They always suggest MORE taxes to fix this and never suggest 0 taxes on middle class and poor. Why do poor and middle class people have to pay property and sales and income and social security tax? It's ridiculous.
The problem is that the rich mainly make money from capital. Hence the lack of tax makes them even richer. Just removing taxes for the poor, would collapse government services, which in many ways protect them from the rich, while the rich would still see their wealth and power grow. Welcome to a disaster.
So tax the rich first, then lower taxes for the poor.
arguably, government services protect the rich from the poor in far more ways than the poor from the rich.
look at bismarck's appropriation of mutual aid programs to undercut and poison socialist movements. he talked about this a bit.
Just getting 30% of our income back from eliminating social security tax would probably help. Those "services" are a scam. My friend works in government. She gets yelled at if she works one minute past 4 and her entire job is to ensure all the money is spent, no matter how frivolously.
It does work, but by trickle, we mean only a trickle. Like a not worthwhile trickle. Not even a roof leak, like condensation on one window
best bit is when the glasses in the bottom decide to topple over
It seems more like they're made of rubber and just get squashed under the weight while complaining about sports or immigration or whatever.
Now now let's not pretend that the cup never overflows, it absolutely does. It overflows directly into OTHER disgustingly wealthy individuals pockets too.
Johnny billionaires might not buy enough for that to spill over to us schmucks, but they buy enormously expensive real estate and furniture, accessories, planes, etc.... they keep that money circulating amongst themselves and their ilk.
And their lawyers and politicians who benefit greatly of their masters success.
Don't forget that the source of the wine filling it up is everybody else who pays for things, including the glasses at the bottom.
Take the median Income, tripple that number. Below that tax income, above that tax networth.
I’m not sure that’d work. I’m pretty sure I make triple the median income and I have barely any assets and my net worth is like -$700k while I pay off my mortgage.
The median income is incredibly low.
How could your net worth be -700k do to a mortgage, wouldn't the asset offset the debt, so unless you owed 700k on a house post it being repossessed the $x house would be net zero or positive in most situations when you purchase, unless the house devalues faster than the rate at which you pay it off?
Yes you’re correct. The asset offsets the debt. It was a joke but it does feel like that at times. Hopefully it’s paid off by the time I retire
Home owners don’t know what they have
If we want to give Money to the Working Class we should give Money to the Billionaires! That's MUCH better then quite literally just giving the Money to the People we said we want to give Money to!
yes, all the electoral solutions are fine. we must not do real politics. we must not take action. we must bury our heads in the sand and stifle our screams. that's how you make REAL change.
Trickle down economics works on paper but because it assumes that A there's only one country in the world in which anybody would spend any money, and it's the country in which they generated that money, and B that people pay taxes proportionate to the amount of money they possess and therefore are incentivized to spend it when they get it, which of course doesn't work because either they are not paying taxes proportionate to their earnings, or they are finding some other way to not pay the taxes other than spending the money.
It also assumes that rich people will invest all of their money into new businesses and create jobs and thus let the money flow into the economy. But most rich people just invest most of their wealth in real estate and in the stock market, that money will never flow into the real economy.
It also assumes the people on top want to give a higher proportion of their earnings to their workers or hire more staff. If I own a business and it's most efficient with 12 employees, you can cut my taxes to zero and I still won't hire more people, and as long as there are people willing to work for pennies I won't be paying dimes.
The best way for the government to incentivize better pay and for my wealth to benefit society is to force me to pay my workers a loving wage and to increase my taxes.
Yeah, a lot of the 1% is overleveraged and still lives paycheck-to-paycheck and increasing their taxes may hurt. Buy really, it's the. 001% that we need to be going after.
We need a wealth cap after which the tax rate is 100%. And to keep them from moving to a new country we can require that it applies to anyone whose business interesta intersect with US companies, with the enforcement mechanism being an embargo from any company operating in the US. We don't even need the taxes to go to the US, but after X amount of wealth it needs to be paid in taxes to someone.
it also assumes that the ultra-wealthy are human and should be allowed to live. which I think is a really problematic assumption.
but their behavior is fundamentally not human. it's like a whole thing.
I think "The Platform" is a good example of how trickle down economics work in reality.
And then the big glass grabs a straw and tries to slurp out more defined benefits from the smaller glasses, but they've been dry for a while
so whenever they want teamwork from you, say they'ld just have to wait until the 'teamwork' starts dropping down from where the extra surplus if previous teamwork flowed to. without teamwork from above, there's no teamwork below, exactly as the leaders showed how they want it to be.
So if we smash the top layer, the rest gets some?
Too many dicks in the way for there to have anything trickle down.
We learned this decades ago through Reaganomics where inequality sudden grew at the fastest pace it ever had in the history of our country at the time.
Despite this people keep preaching it.
because you would be suggesting glorious leader ronald reagan the actor is wrong and that is unfathamable
What are you implying? That looks efficient to me! (/s)
Has anyone actually ever said that trickle down economics works...? I see people making fun of it all the time, but no one seems to be championing it? Is it just one giant straw man?
I don't think anybody actually believes it works, but they'll tell you it does when they give tax breaks to the wealthy "job creators".
They do not call it trickle down economics when lobbying. However tax breaks for the rich to increase investment and consumption are extremly common.
Can confirm.
For all you who think voting will change anything, I've got some swampland for you.
Most people who think voting will change anything also think it's the only way to change anything. So it's helpful to suggest specific direct action alternatives.
The Platform is a good example of how it actually works. Those at the top eat everything then throw their shit at whoever is below them.
Discussions about degrowth and all sorts of related topics. This includes UBI, economic democracy, the economics of green technologies, enviromental legislation and many more intressting economic topics.
