We were not primitive and stupid 50 years ago. These assholes knew they were contributing to global warming as much as they knew trickle down economics wasn’t going to work.
It worked exactly like they expected it to. Of course that’s vastly different from how they claimed it was going to work, but that’s just what they told the marks to get them to go along with the con. The said part is, over 50 years later and most Republican voters still believe trickle down economics works, just that nobody has done it “right” yet.