I wrote out a long comment yesterday on a post here discussing Trickle down Economics. As an economist, history student, and former business major in college, these kinds of low effort blame games tend to get to me, so I went off a little. But I also understand why such quick and easy blame is so appealing to so many, so I continued on to cover some of the actual concerns that affect the working class and which are indeed directly able to be campaigned against.
I wanted to spread that mini essay a little more widely, so the copy and paste of yesterday’s tirade is below, bad grammar included.
————————————————
Firstly, for the ten thousandth time, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS. That phrase has no meaning. There is no agreed definition for it because there has never been even one serious economist to put forward any theory under that name, nor any theory resembling what your first assumptions about what this mythical “trickle down” system might be. In fact, it doesn’t even seem to be a phrase directly used by any state or national level politicians, yes including Reagan, EVER.
If you think you have written evidence of this economic system, explained and written out by any scholar, academic, let alone economist then boy do I have good news for you! Contact Dr. Thomas Sowell and provide him with this new discovery of yours to claim a cash prize. I believe his prize stands at $1000 US dollars, as it has for the more than 3 decades he has offered it and has not had a single person yet claim it.
As for this 40 year period you speak of, I only ask, when? I’m going to assume you mean the last 40 years despite the fact that I have no idea how a non existent economic theory has been “tried” for the past 4 decades.
You’re making a claim about how government money should be spent here, that or disguising a completely different conversation in plain sight, so I’ll go with the former. We know what government spending and policy has done damage not only for the past 40 years but since the beginning of time. ALL OF IT. Even amongst those supposed avenues of state spending which are widely regarded as most default, most beneficial, it’s a common joke that the states and governments from antiquity to modernity are completely incompetent and horrifically inefficient at spending money and doing work.
We all want to feel militarily safe in our nation and drive on non tolled roads that lie perfectly laid for thousands of miles – and yet we waste no time lambasting how our government has wasted trillions of dollars trillions on near useless military machinery and spends an obscene amount of our money by default each year on more unneeded killing machines all while failing to fix that same damn pothole, we all have at least one, that has gone unfixed for twenty fucking years. Oh and the few roads that connect the major cities and are actually decently maintained? They’re either private already or still public – but paid for doubly with tolls anyway.
Here’s an idea. How about the government stops fucking with us in the first place. Don’t ask daddy trump or decrepit granddaddy biden to fix shit. Demand them to stop messing with it! End the federal reserve and the planned inflation that makes it impossible for the average person to properly save money. End the regulations making housing more expensive than a decade of your salary all while somehow managing to make build quality worse instead of better and more dangerous instead of safer. Undue the government enforced monopolies allowing utility companies to dominate very unfree markets rather than have competitors bite into state mandated profit margins and stopping us from embracing the forms of power generation that we ALREADY FUCKING KNOW are cleaner and safer than what we’re currently being forced to use “pending review by the EPA”.
Let people be free. No all our problems won’t vanish, not overnight, nor in full ever. But oh dear sweet god, without all the shit the government is doing to us I promise you things would be better.
And if you still want the basics? And attempt at public roads and a standing defensive military? Great, but cut taxation by 95% and just fund those things instead of shrugging when the pentagon says “oops, I lost the records showing how I spent FOUR TRILLION FUCKING DOLLARS.