Trickle Down Mythology Exposed

Are we still falling for this crap?

Apparently, all the GOP candidates believe that, a joke made by Will Rogers in the Great Depression that ”money was all appropriated for the top in hopes that it would trickle down to the needy” (pg 184)  What Will Rogers actually said, in context, was:

They (Republicans) didn’t start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour.   The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the dryest little spot. But he dident know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue

Sound familiar?  That’s pretty much the same game plan they ran during the S&L crisis under Bush the 1st and again in the more recent crisis under Bush the 2nd and now Bush the wants to be 3rd is telling us how his brother did a pretty good job while he was in office – as if none of us were there to witness it!  But this article isn’t about whether or not Americans are stupid enough to elect another Bush while we’re still cleaning up the last one’s mess.

This is about whether or not Americans are stupid enough to let ANY candidate bullshit them with what Bush I originally called “Voodoo Economics” before joining team Reagan and embracing the WORST ECONOMIC POLICY EVER!  Someone really needs to explain to these complicit journalists, who haven’t checked a fact since the Carter Administration, that IT WAS A JOKE – “trickle down” was a derogatory term to describe the obvious supply-side disaster of Hoover, Reagan and the Bushes – it wasn’t supposed to become the Republican religion!  

This chart from the St. Louis Federal Reserve illustrates what has happened since the mid-70s as Wages (red) have fallen 7% as a percentage of GDP while Corporate Profits have grown 7%.  So, I guess I’m wrong – trickle down works perfectly:  When you suck the money away from the workers, it trickles right down to the Corporate balance sheets!  

Of course 7% is 14% of the 50% each of them had to start with, but let’s not nit-pick because 7% is horrific enough without doing proper math.  The worst thing, of course, it that it took 25 years to go from 50% to 47% (2000) for wages but only 15 more years to get to 42% and there’s no sign at all of this trend slowing down – quite the opposite, in fact.

IN PROGRESS

Provided courtesy of Phil’s Stock World.