Bart Willems 
Robert ReichTrickle-down economics has been an abject failure over the past 20 years. It’s time to invest in workers. Now.
Philip@rbreich Trickle-down economics has never been anything but a clever excuse ...
Stew@PhilipKeuleers @rbreich What logic is there in giving money (or tax breaks or whatever) to wealthy party A with the hope that maybe they’ll then give some to not-wealthy Party B?
O@PhilipKeuleers @rbreich Yup, Reagan's budget director even admitted it on the record early in the Reagan administration. Stockman said something to the effect of "supply side" was just a Trojan horse for trickle down.
kennygstevenson🏀@rbreich 20? Try 40+
@rbreich without getting the money out of politics, how does this happen? Because I see no one pushing to get money out of the political picture.
ScottinSoCal 🇺🇦 🕊 🏳🌈@rbreich
I'm in favor of rolling the tax code back to the 1950s, adjusted for inflation. While we're at it, we could bring back fins on cars. They were fun.
I'm in favor of rolling the tax code back to the 1950s, adjusted for inflation. While we're at it, we could bring back fins on cars. They were fun.
@@ScottSoCal @rbreich but were they fintastic?
@rbreich: The economist John Kenneth Galbraith noted that "trickle-down economics" had been tried before in the United States in the 1890s under the name "horse-and-sparrow theory", writing:
Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy—what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: "If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."
Patrick Gillam@patrickgillam @rbreich: They are one and the same: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/05/011805.asp
Jerry is watching Twitter burnI love it. “Horse-and-sparrow” needs to be used much more widely.
Isturiz 🆗@rbreich Trickle-down economics, just like communism, is a nice concept, and it would work if it wasn't for a small but critical detail:
Homo sapiens is an inherently greedy and selfish animal.
Homo sapiens is an inherently greedy and selfish animal.
doug chamberlain
Lennart Huizing@isturiz @rbreich I can't agree with that. Trickle-down economics is a way to stimulate and legitimate greed, and it fails because human nature can only bear so much greed, and trickle-down is excessive. It's that most of us are not willing to be greedy, when some of us are, that causes the collapse. That, and the fact that the logical result of TD is the accumulation of all money at the top, making it worthless.
Mondrianyone@rbreich Just 20 years? I would have said trickle down economics has been a failure since the 1980s and the Reagan years. 🤷🏻♀️
Tom von Alten@rbreich Just 20 years? The history of TDE failure seems like a good essay topic
OstiDeChris@rbreich arguably, a failure for 40 years. We need laws that make it mandatory for workers to be unionized and cap gross corporate profits. It’s time to work in a way that we all get ahead. #UnionStrong #LivingWage
MaKai@rbreich Trickle-down is just another way for the rich reward each other. Build from the bottom up and you have stability.
pmroman@rbreich Don't you mean over the past 42 years?
brickbat@rbreich Trickle-down was the first blatant and consistent lie of the republican party. That so many average citizens support that issue illustrates the gullibility of the American public.
Three plus or minus five@rbreich Apparently it's time to make sure that "wages dont' raise too fast".
@rbreich Who can forget Republcans calling it voodoo economics in their presidential debate?
TheDickThinker@rbreich something's trickling down. Smells like Brill Cream. Reagan!
theillien@rbreich it's been an abject failure for well more than 20 years.
Vivian Smotherman
Paul Weber@rbreich
Trickle-down has been debunked years ago, I believe. And, I’d say, the proof is in the low-cost pudding 😔
Trickle-down has been debunked years ago, I believe. And, I’d say, the proof is in the low-cost pudding 😔
Tofu Golem@rbreich
What do you mean failure?
The wealthy got wealthier, and that's the only thing that matters to the people whose decisions matter.
Denver Lake@rbreich why has trickle down economics never been equated to a pyramid scheme?
@rbreich it's been a failure since Reaganomics started it in the eighties...
@rbreich 43 years. Always a CON.
joe@rbreich
Trying to fix the world with not near enough resources
to work with is an awesome task. But someone, or some
group, has to make the effort. Things are not right.
Trying to fix the world with not near enough resources
to work with is an awesome task. But someone, or some
group, has to make the effort. Things are not right.
🌊Ann Morris🐕🍀🌎🌊🌊@rbreich 20 years? Try 50.
@rbreich time for trickle up economics.
Big Head Tales@rbreich So far the House GOP message is to stop investment into infrastructure and Americans in favor of corporate profits.
chicating@rbreich With, sincerely, all due respect, it's past due. I'ma let you finish, though.
@rbreich not a failure for all, just most.
Stuart Kidd@rbreich J.K.Galbraith: Trickle-down theory - the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.
@rbreich longer than 25 years
@rbreich
I'd argure the timeline is more like 40 years.
I'd argure the timeline is more like 40 years.
Neko@rbreich as another frame of reference: literally an entire generation or more. I've lived my entire life with people insisting to me that someone will hand me more money if I let them take a bigger cut 😓 as a gamer I know that's not up to snuff, even playing with a friend you always split even
@rbreich
It’s impossible to do while corporations own the government!
It’s impossible to do while corporations own the government!
@rbreich it's been a failure since Reagan tried it on us and almost everybody bought it.
@rbreich it’s a failure because it was always a fallacy and a Trojan horse for one percenters to make more money via tax breaks for the rich.
jrabbit@rbreich Isn't that more like 40 years?
@rbreich Picketty's analysis confirms this conclusively, right?
Christine (Bitsie)
Ethan Marten@rbreich Trickle-up economics works.
@rbreich : The thing that always obviously absurd was the tax lie that if you reduced taxes on the top revenues would increase. The implication is that as taxes approached zero revenue would approach infinity. I'm not an economist, I'm a lowly computer programmer and systems analyst, but that can't happen in this space/time continuum.
Jeffrey@rbreich the trouble with trickle down economics is most of US are bottom feeders.
Debbie Wade@rbreich you mean 50 years, right?
@rbreich 40 years!
scottiemacf@rbreich couldn't agree more
dvdjaco@rbreich it isn't a failure because it was never meant to work. It's just another lie to convince workers that they can become wealthy while the system pumps wealth the other way around.
Vishwa Jai@rbreich It's more like 150 years that they've been trying to make it work. It just doesn't.
They've rebranded it twice. Still not working.
It can't be made to work.
But on the flip side, investing in the poor is what works, whether they're working or not.
People just need to stop trying to pass the buck of responsibility. If you can help, you should.
Maureen Kelsey