The Trickle Down Fallacy: Greed Takes It All!

[Joanne98]

For some forty years now we have as a nation prescribed to the Conservative Ideology that, by helping those at the top that have the most to have more, greater wealth will be created which will trickle down to the rest of us. That we can unleash American ingenuity from the top down through tax cuts and deregulation for large multi-national corporations, helping them make more profits. But the practical reality is very different from this. Corporate greed resulted in outrageous high management salaries and compensation, outsourcing of American manufacturing jobs to China and elsewhere, inefficiencies and irresponsibility, and speculative wealth creation in Wall Street that’s only on paper with nothing produced of real economic value. This ‘trickle down theory’ has created a new class of ‘kings and barons’ that possess most of the wealth of the country with ‘trickle down crumbs’ for the rest to the people.

The ‘kings and barons’ of old were able to maintain their hold on power through fear, loyalty, patriotism, religion and military strength. Certainly these parallel well our own political experience, with the rise of the Religious Right, Republican Party loyalty, flag waving patriotism, fear of terrorism, and police-state powers of ‘The Patriot Act’ . What makes our world however different from the world of old is the Modern Economy that has evolved over the last 100 years. This Economy is dynamic, cyclical and has incorporated all segments of the society, including workers, capitalists, consumers and investors. And it is also now global in scope. Any one of its components malfunctioning will send the whole organic system to a decline. Our Economy needs a large and thriving working middle class to maintain growth and stability. When the middle class is squeezed, as it is currently the case, the whole economy suffers and declines (”Wall Street Meltdown and the Collapsing Middle Class“). The ‘trickle down’ policies of the Conservative movement has left the middle class weak and collapsing.

Correct solution requires clear understanding of the problems we are facing. Barack Obama gets it! John McCain just does not get it (”McCain: Out of Touch and Out of Mind on the Economy“). He still prescribes to the same old worn out and fallacious slogans of tax cuts to the rich to unleash American ingenuity, greater deregulation, free markets to solve our problems (”Free Markets and Forest Fires“), government is the problem not the solution, and on and on. We’ve heard all these many times before. You can fool some of the people all of the time with these. But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. In this election the harsh realities of the economic meltdown and the collapsing middle class belie all of the Conservative slogans of the past. We need instead to unleash American productivity from the bottom up through tax cuts and programs that help working middle class people provide for their families better wages, better education, better health care, affordable housing, and clean renewable energy. Barack Obama sees this clearly. John McCain does not!

http://thepoliticaldispatch.com/2008/10/04/the-trickle-down-fallacy-greed-takes-it-all/

[cliffordu]

1. Trickle up economics!!!!!

[Joanne98]

2. Voo Doo economics was my favorite!

[Frumious B]

3. Instead of investing in our economy they are taking their Bush tax cuts elsewhere.

They putting that money into the economies of countries with cheap and plentiful labor and leaving America a nation of debtors who borrow money to buy cheap junk.