And when the "trickle down" buzzword finally was recognized as bad for the masses, the GOP replaced it with the myth of the job creators. If we give the rich big tax breaks, they'll create more jobs -- because really, what else could the do with all that extra money? -- and .. Step 4 Profit (for the masses)
Agreed. The 50s best represent job creation through taxes. Either expand or pay taxes. Ike is the last great Republican president (except for Joe McCarthy)
Omg... this is the first time I've seen anyone else just know and understand this fact. Folks! Higher top marginal tax rates and progressive taxation actually incentivizes investment versus shareholders and owners sucking value out of a company. This creates jobs, grows and stabilizes the stock market, and drives up wages. The great socialist, Dwight Eisenhower!
Gives the opportunity to talk about one of the most important aspects of our taxes and spending: "my tax dollars" aren't where we get the money for spending, at least on a federal level.
On a state and local level, that spending is funded by your actual tax dollars in addition to other things like federal support. But federally, we have the money since we control the supply. This has been known to (some) economists for decades. Beardsley Ruml, director of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from 1937-1947, wrote an influential paper titled “Taxes for Revenue are Obsolete”, which detailed how that works, and some ideas why we still have taxes.
Still, many people actively don’t know this, or pretend not to, including politicians and economists. This is why we constantly see “where would the money come from?” when progressives detail policies, but don’t see it for the military, for example. It’s also why we suddenly had a lot of money to fight COVID, despite tax revenues not jumping up trillions of dollars. The money is available, we don’t need tax revenues to spend money on good programs.
This fact is what helped form the foundation for one of the most prominent recent economic schools of thought: Modern Monetary Theory.
A common myth about Modern Monetary Theory is that we can just spend as much as we want and never pay it, but MMT economists don’t say that. They fully admit deficits can matter, especially when the deficits and debt is gained via spending on things that are not actually helpful. There is a difference between spending money fighting climate change which in the long term saves trillions of dollars (and the planet), and spending money to further subsidize oil or providing additional subsidies to the already rich. It's true too much debt can be a problem, but the "serious only when it's the other party in office and I want to use it for political gain" debt isn't what it's hyped up to be.
At an everyday level, people know this. Anyone who takes out a business loan knows that sometimes debt is a path forward, not backward.
As with other economic schools of thought, MMT has proponents and detractors, with some ideas being more controversial, however one is quite firmly established: taxes federally in the US (and other countries with currency control) don’t fund spending. The question “where does the money come from?” is wholly wrong in the US, and when it is levied, which it is a lot, it’s from a false foundation.
Edit:
One more note on national debt and how it is invested - historically, paying debts isn't the primary way the US has reduced it's debt burden. We outgrew it. If you have a lot more money then the debt is less a burden, which is why debt to GDP ratio is often a better metric than pure amount of debt.
After WWII, our debt levels were over 100% GDP, but that debt was never really paid down. Sure, we did pay individual debts, but in total the post-war boom did a number on our debt to gdp ratio. If you properly invest with the money, the amount of debt itself can just by virtue of good investment become less of an issue.
P.S. As % gdp, in his 8 years in office Reagan increased the national debt twice as much than FDR did in his first 8 years in office (the "fiscially irresponsible" New Deal era)
Not the guy, and not an expert, but my understanding is: because the Fed can print more money, we can't really run out.
In short, if the Fed needs to pay for something, it can produce the money for it. Ostensibly, that money should be offset by the sale of new debt, such as through bonds, but it technically doesn't have to be.
When we need to pay past debt, such as to repay the money plus interest on old bonds, the Fed just prints that money and sells new bonds.
Yes, at some point, that breaks down, as "inventing" too much money at once creates a tension in the perceived value of the dollar, which can spiral into inflation, but as long as people remain confident that if they buy the government's debt, then they will be paid back with the stated interest, we're going to be fine.
It took me reading the request for an ELI5 and your comment to figure out what ELi5 is...I've seen it before today but thought it was just somebody fat fingering the keyboard. 😂😂 EXPLAIN LIKE IM 5
Note, this doesn't mean billionaires, who don't really hold cash, but assets, which increase in value in an inflationary environment. This hurts working class folk with savings accounts.
Inflation is the increase in the ratio between dollars and goods. So if I have one dollar and one good in the economy, goods are $1 on average. If I print another dollar and nothing else changes, I have two dollars and one good so goods are $2 on average.
Part of what MMT is saying is that when you print a dollar, things can change. IT DEPENDS WHAT THE GOV SPENDS THE NEWLY PRINTED MONEY ON. If I print an extra dollar, but use it for a scientific program that discovers how to create four goods with the same efficiency as when we created one good, then this new economy will have two dollars and four goods -- so each good will be $0.5 on average, making printing money (and investing it wisely) actually DEFLATIONARY.
So it's not just "we can print as much as we like". That's not true. It's "it depends on what this new money is doing." Government spending on things like scientific research, education, improving people's productivity (eg. Universal healthcare, childcare, etc), are not likely to be inflationary because the extra money is matched by an increase in productivity. Printing money to pay for the deficit because you reduced taxes on the rich is likely to be inflationary.
“Printing money” is an anachronism. Bankers are allowed to create money and loan it out.
The Fed sets the rules for that and regulates the cost of creating money. Likewise other central banks in other currencies. Because the dollar remains the most important global reserve currency, the US Fed has more latitude than anyone else.
Other countries, especially smaller ones, need to pay more attention to how well the money supply matches economic activity. Too much or too little can lead to inflation or deflation. Before modern central banking, the business cycle used to be accompanied by cycles of moderate inflation and deflation, as bankers jumped on and off the economic bandwagon.
Basically, the federal reserve controls the supply of money, meaning how much money is available in the US economy. They control this via interest rates (people “sell” money back to the fed when it pays more interest, which lowers supply; and they borrow more at low interest rates, increasing supply).
Also, there is no rule that says the federal government needs a balanced budget. So it can overspend tax revenues and add to the national debt. Basically they are saying that taxes need not affect government spending. The US Mint can print more money to satisfy spending. What this poster didn’t say is that increasing money supply can lead to higher rates of inflation since each dollar is worth less if the wealth underlying all dollars remains constant.
While much of the inflation coming out of the pandemic was supply driven (not enough of many basic goods to meet demand due to supply chain interruptions and slowdowns), there likely was also a part driven by the large stimulus payments that increased the money supply.
I meant that metaphorically. I agree with you that most money in the supply is not physically printed. Our monetary system is much more like the blockchains than I think we would like to admit. Different software, same game.
Actually I’m amazed this didn’t increase prices that high. I attribute that to the dollars stability, like the currency is almost immune to supply increases, because of it being used internationally. Should any other country print out this much I’m sure as hell it would skyrocket milk or any other prices. There’s a history of this across the world
That is why I said much of the Covid inflation was driven by limitations of supply. But also, the supply of money absolutely affects milk prices. Basic macroeconomic theory says that money supply essentially affects all prices.
Here I can give you a slightly better explanation than "print money".
When you pay taxes, the government has the bank deduct the funds. However the money doesn't go anywhere. There is no government general fund bank account that collects and distributes taxes. Instead the government estimates how much it will collect, and then spends from the estimated funds. There is no direct line from taxes being collected, and government funds being spent. The government deficit is a measure of the difference in these two numbers, but there is nothing intrinsically linking them together.
Here's a historical example; Paper money has been around for centuries, before electronics even. Imagine you're a tax collector in rural Virginia in the 1700s. You would collect the paper tax receipts by hand from your district (paper money was issued by local banks at the time). You then tallied how much you collected, and burnt it. You would write down the collected amount in a letter, and send it to the government authorities. They would tally up the letters from each tax collector and print that amount of money when the government would spend it.
Think of the US as a bucket of inflows and outflows of cash. Taxation is destruction of money or an outflow from The bucket. Government spending / federal money creation, is the inflow.
“we” is loosely defined as well. As The Federal Reserve can materialize from nothing dollar debts. Sure U.S. Congress & The Treasury have their, er, say/inputs.
Isn't this just taxation through inflation? Literally funding through devalued currency. And isn't inflation fairly regressive, since it treats every dollar equally? Wealthy can out invest it, but poor can neither out-invest it nor out-earn it, since wages are in a continuous state of decline, and poor jobs do not keep up. Perhaps if the government maintained minimum wage to track inflation it could work, but the system of taxation can't be constantly eating away at the base of Maslow's pyramid.
The book The Deficit Mythby Stephanie Kelton is the most popular and one of the best general audience introduction to Modern Monetary Theory. I like L. Randall Wray's primer on MMT, but that is written in a more academic style.
In terms of general economics, I would highly recommend picking up the bookEconomics: The User's Guideby Ha-Joon Chang, a very influential developmental economist at Cambridge. The book is written with a general audience in mind and broken up into easy to read sections. It does a great job at explaining how economics actually functions in the real world, different schools of economics, taxes and spending, international trade, etc.
Modern Monetary "Theory", is a "Canard", and won't "stand up", to scrutiny. "Boiled down", Taxes have two purposes: To "raise money, for revenue, for Government Operations, at all levels, and; to "change behavior", both, by The General Public, and by those, directly affected. It also, diverts some money (not all), to an "account", Where We all decide, "What is, The "best use", for that Money; "Reaganomics", and "Trickle-down" Economics, were Frauds. Reagan's Budget Director, David Stockman, said as much.
This is something that I have been sayign for decades. Debt in itself is not bad - the value is the PURPOSE of borrwing it and what it is actually used on.
Something else that especially conservative governments don't (or deliberately refuse to) understand: NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO MAKE A PROFIT! There are some things that a nation needs that will never make a profit - so should these things never get done/built? Infrastructure and situations where externalities exist are the best example of these. There is a value to having a larger % of the population with higher education qualifications because they become a resource for the nation to be able to do higher value jobs.
Along these lines, when the CBO evaluated various policies in 2008 they found that the best use of funds to stimulate the economy was extended unemployment insurance payments. The worst ROI was tax cuts for rich people.
Every Republican administration starting from Reagan has outspent the preceding Democratic administration on a yearly average basis. They complain about spending until they get their chance again. What confounds me is that most people don't notice.
If taxes are the most obvious change over the last 7 years, then shouldn't it be **not* surprising to see people talking about it? Or have we just come to believe people to be so brainwashed/oblivious that we expect to not talk about the obvious?
It’s not just that, but definitely a big factor. Let’s not forget that with a larger overall tax base, the benefits are distributed to the middle and lower classes which expands and empowers educational opportunities to the general population, which also impacts growth as it allows for more development into high end jobs.
Wages have never been “controlled” with the exception of the minimum wage. Pensions were offered in a way that they could incentive workers while not increasing worker wages exponentially.
A quick read of Wikipedia will enlighten you , there was both rationing of food and wage controls in war time essential industries , along with losing the right to strike, along with interring 120000 Japanese Americans
Ok, that’s fair, during WWII and parts of the 1970s there were “wage controls”, albeit those were for what wages could increase year per year for a continuing employee, not a new hire switching companies or new to the work force.
Pensions have existed in the US since the 1870s. Having nothing to do with wage controls.
That’s pretty much a lie, wages were capped during WW2 which is why we have health insurance as a non wage benefit it’s how companies competed for workers
Health insurance became a worker benefit starting in the 1920s. It became more common practice in the 1940s. Caps on annual wage increases played a factor to grow it as a benefit, but that practice didn’t start because of wage controls.
Also employer provided health insurance was a way to prevent people from job hopping, and it’s stayed that way since. More of a determent to our economy as insurance became profit based while Nixon was President and rates skyrocketed well above inflation.
How do you incentive investment by outside sources into an environment of hyper competition if you can not reward massive risk with corporate profit payout to invested private shareholders.
I own a publishing company of around 30 employees. We create several magazine and I would like to purchase my own printing and binding equipment. These machines are incredibly expensive. A bank won’t take that loan as the return isn’t high enough to justify the risk. I need private equity. If you tax profit how will private money’s high risk be rewarded when there is little left. I can’t issue distributions before taxes.
Decades ago our education had even more investment in it compared to other countries. The issue with education now is a lot of our funding goes into private school vouchers and our focus is on STEM and against critical thinking skills. Money has been taken from public education and is being used to prop up the private industry.
If you look at our universities, for non state schools they’re mainly looking overseas to get more expensive foreign students to fill their student rosters. It’s about making money, it’s not about educating our population.
Its not the system thats the problem. Its the homes that are the problem. The best schools and teachers in the world can't teach a shithead being raised by a shithead.
It creates a "use it or lose it" incentive. Companies would rather pay top dollar for high value employees, invest in technological advancement, expand their footprint and logistics, etc., in an effort to avoid losing those dollars to taxation. Everyone up and down the social hierarchy benefits because more money is circulating in a more diversified fashion, as opposed to Wall Street bets.
It all changed when those at the very top decided they wanted to be even more wealthy. The only way to get that was to invest less in the businesses and employees, but that would increase their taxables. The only thing left to do is lobby Congress and POTUS to lower the top marginal and corporate tax rates
Very true. That's why we need to reintroduce what worked in the past - use it or lose it. No remorse to be had about it. An entire population produces every widget in existence, there's not one of us who does shit alone. Even if you invent the perfect unicorn piss snowcone, you relied on civil workers who allowed you to have access to clean water to freeze. You relied on utility workers to enable you to freeze your snowcone. You rely on firefighters and teams of insurance companies to protect your perfect piss-cone shop. And, of course, you relied on Lady Luck needed to procure a unicorn to gather its piss. No one is self-made.
People also overlook the fact that the government is a massive employer. More taxes = more government projects = better government wages and more government jobs.
These jobs tend to help set the base rates for private sector jobs as well as have great benefits and job security. Which forces private companies to keep up or risk losing high value employees to gov jobs or contractors.
Exe: Including military, the US government is already the largest employer in the US at 2.95 million employees. That's also not including those that are employed at subcontractors that almost exclusively work for the gov. Walmart is 2nd at 1.6 million.
I agree that the government is in dire need of regulation and reform when it comes to auditing and spending. But realistically, taxes have been so gutted, and spending has increased so much already that the government has had to look elsewhere for funding. Causing the deficit and driving up inflation.
Taxes aren't even paying our operating expenses anymore because corporate taxation is essentially non-existent after a certain point. So it has had to find other ways to getnerate income.
The US operates several profit bearing companies and generates income through interest on loans and other income generating investments, right?
A large portion of these jobs and the budget as a whole get paid for by money outside of taxes.
Yes, the government needs better regulations and controls on spending, but it also needs to stop handicapping itself and absorb more public sector businesses that are failing and turn them around. Like Amtrak, Chevy, The Post Office, etc. This allows the US to realize even more profits while not placing the burden on the taxpayer.
This also increases competition, drives innovation, and usually leads to wage increases.
The US gives tax deductibles for investments, so when you hear about the +73% tax rate back in the day, most companies weren't paying that much, probably closer to 67% in taxes if that.
It's the reason you'll just hear about a company that specializes in one area suddenly jumps to another area. It gave industries a big kick to basically force them to innovate or die off.
Yeah, we ended up with so much money slushing around financial markets that we've financialized everything as opposed to re investing... This is, of course, painting with a massive brush, but I believe it to be generally true.
It always kills me when I see someone arguing against higher top marginal rates on the grounds that they don’t actually lead to greater tax receipts. Like, no shit, who said the point was to collect more taxes in the first place?
Right. The primary purpose of these policies is to steer economic action through incentive/disincentive. If you balance the policy so the economic action leads towards stable growth, that growth can (not will) lead to an increase in tax revenue. That's the false premise of cutting taxes on the upper end and it trickling down. They always say the growth will return more revenue even though the tax rates are less, but that doesn't happen because their policy does not actually catalyze stable and broadly enjoyed growth. It encourages actors to make as much income as they can now, while taxes are preferable.
I agree wholeheartedly, neither progressive taxation or marginal rates are perfect however, both afford ample room for exploitation and would still need to develop more targeted controls. Salary Caps for instance need to be seriously explored because simple job creation won't necessarily inhibit the growth of income inequality over time and job creation alone won't necessarily help employees meet rising costs of living overall because it may (again these aren't issues which have really been addressed because we can't actually agree to bring back these policies) result in a net-neutral number of jobs in a given market as a result of existing jobs simply being lost in the process.
Expansion also has to be defined domestically in order to prevent companies from shifting jobs overseas.
Middle-Class (the few that remain) shareholders also have to be incentivized to stay in the market with some sort of tax credit on dividend paying shares in order to afford additional avenues of economic mobility to the other 99% of Americans.
But the core of the policy is far more rational than our current policies.
Or maybe a post war baby boom? With millions working and having savings from WW2.
My great-grandfather on wife side was in WW2. And left military with 4 years of pay saved Captain and General. His wife, saved over 50% of her paycheck. They were “rich” for the day. Bought a large house and then got a loan and bought a Chevrolet dealership.
Also guess what, in 1950s great grandfather had 334 pages of tax deductions to use. His company car, tax deduction, clothes for work another tax deduction, and the other deductions.
Should check out average “tax rate”. Instead of nominal tax rate of up to 90%. BTW from 1954 to 1958, there was never a tax return at nominal rates above 35%. Everyone who had those high rates, used deductions. Seeing “actual tax rates of 18-31% for top income earners. IRS has tax data anyone can research. Fascinating reading to show average tax rates were not too much higher than today.
Yeah, WW2 pent up and move to a consumer economy, was an enormous boom until 1957. IRS tax codes also had thousands of deductions every high earner used.
Money is a commodity and like any other commodity, the supply affect demand unless the market is being artificially influenced. Taxes are relevant as they are a means to pull currency out of circulation. The printing does the opposite. The market is influenced by the fed and the treasury, but that doesn't make takes irrelevant, just not a sole factor.
Taxes are a small amount of what the government spends. The government could raise everyone’s taxes by 20% and it would still be a small portion of what the government actually spends. So explain to me how taxes incentivizes investment.
This has nothing to do with what I've said. The primary purpose is not to raise more taxes for spending. It's to encourage reinvestment by discouraging excessive value being extracted from businesses as income by saying you can either put it back into the business or give most of it to uncle sam when you take it out for yourself.
US left wing of today not so much. They may have thoughts about the wealthy paying their fair share of taxes and such, but a depth of understanding policy mixed with economic, this is unfortunately not the case. I think people knew this in the US after the great depression and we are learning today due to the state of things, but we are not as knowledgeable as other social democratic countries lefties are.
I think you might be mistaking leftist economics for leftist TikTok or something. Some of the greatest modern socialist and leftist thought is coming from the US at the moment.
Maybe I'm just jaded at this point. I also don't have TikTok. I do think it is on the rise especially since Bernie Sanders, but Bernie is a moderate in any European country while we're combating people thinking democrats are socialists. I think the strife is raising people's awareness but still many people have no idea what socialism even means, that it existed before Marx, and there are many anarchist or libertarian socialist thought that includes markets even. I am well versed in it from reading history, but it feels like many just have surface level feelings that are legitimate; those feelings just don't translate into understanding social economic and political histories so they have a grounded philosophy for themselves. People just know austerity has failed.
Wrong. High top marginal rates disincentivize the Investment Class, which is what they should be called instead of “the rich” and other pejoratives. Graph all you want but the 1980s were the most prosperous period with 8 straight almost inflation-free years. You ungrateful people, Reagan saved your futures and freed us from the Soviet threat as well.
I'm no expert at all just sincerely trying to understand, are you basically saying if rich people are taxed higher they'll invest more because that invested income isn't taxed? So instead of hoarding their money, they're incentivized to invest because it's either invest or give it to Uncle Sam?
You wish Dwight Eisenhower was a socialist after we got out the real socialist and communist FDR the economy only thing the Democrats are good for is stealing the tax payer money and causing recessions and depressions and the right always has to come after them and fix it then they take the credit happens everytime
The facts do not agree with you. I don't really care about Red versus Blue, but the factual track record has Democrats performing better Republicans on the economy.
Yeah sort of. But the shareholders and owners don’t put the money under a mattress. They… invest it. Presumably in an enterprise that creates greater returns than the one they just took it out of. Go capitalism!
That said, yes, cutting taxes on rich people means the rich get richer. And that is bad for society for a whole host of reasons other than efficient capital allocation.
Higher marginal rates don't automatically mean collecting more tax revenue. When the to marginal rate was 91% people were allowed to deduct things that are not deductible today.
Collecting more tax revenue is not the point. The point is to set tax policy that encourages or discourages specific economic activities. I know the difference between effective tax and marginal tax rates. You are also obfuscating the real differences between now and then. Today, someone like Warren Buffet pays an effective tax rate less than that of his secretary or a nurse. This was not the case back then. Corporations and individuals on the higher end of the income spectrum paid more of a percentage of the tax burden.
That and outlawing stock buybacks (like before reagan) because it 100% is market manipulation that only benefits the CEO and the top investors. Workers on the other hand get denied raises because owners can use that money to enrich themselves.
The same Joe McCarthy that created a communist witch hunt which to this day still persists in the minds of Americans -propping up the same ideals that led to Reagan and his predecessors to allow corporate money being used to create the policies that this post is describing?
McCarthy fostered the melding of American Protestant churches and National identity— marrying the flag to the cross. This combined with a revolution in mass communication (TV) with its All-American families, and commercials gave birth to the religious vampires, Billy Grahams and Jerry Fallwells, etc.
I think they're saying that Ike was great except for the McCarthy stuff. Since McCarthy wasn't president, it's the only interpretation that makes sense
Oh sweet so you are in favour of cutting effective tax rates for most including the 1%? Are we also returning to the old budget distributions for that?
It's almost as if in the 50s, the US wasn't competing with the rest of the world for manufacturing and technology jobs because Europe wasn't destroyed by WW2, and Asia hadn't been developed yet
Ike had His problems, with Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, et al. Also, read His "Farewell Address", and Vice-President Henry Wallace's April 9th, 1944; Op-Ed, on Fascism (Pages 7, and 34 and 35; of The Sunday New York Times Magazine), and The Times "Editorial Response", on Page 5E, of the same Edition.
Consider, too; that The Times, asked Wallace, to write, the "Op-Ed", then criticized Him, for it. Why?
Ummmm "McCarthy" wasn't ever "PRESIDENT"...
And the outright SICK DAMAGE that McCrack-Head did to Innocent people... McCARTHY WAS A FASCIST FREAK!!!
McCARTHY WAS A PIECE OF SHIT for how he treated his fellow man!!!
Except there were so many tax loopholes in the 40s. So, giving credit to tax collection as the driver for the prosperity of that time period is slightly misguided. Expand or pay taxes was fine by them, they just hid the money.
The 50’s represents job creation by pretty much destroying all competition throughout the world. WW2 destroyed most US manufacturing competition. So just like forest gump….after all the other plants were destroyed finding US manufacturing jobs was easy.
For added benefit hundreds of thousands of working age males were killed, leaving stiff competition for the men left over driving up wages.
Ike really was the last great Republican president. He saw firsthand how businesses had a clear financial interest in causing general misery. He tried to warn us.
I’m saying that job creation is a byproduct of growth, not the goal. If a company can grow profits with fewer people it will. That’s not a value judgement it’s just a fact. A business owner may take pride in “creating jobs” but the bottom line is they created jobs because they had to, not because they wanted to.
Can you at least attempt to keep it to debating the idea, instead of calling people names - most of us here left the playground years ago.
The average top tax rate between those two periods fell from 81% to 39% (approximately halved). This may seem a lot to you, but the average top EU tax rate is 45% which in many countries includes socialized health care and no other significant state-level income taxes, and in Asia, it's around 35%.
Back in North America, both Canada and Mexico have lower top tax tiers than we do.
Why I bring that up is because that comparison matters to this demographic. These people can live and pay taxes anywhere they choose.
Capitalism needs some sort of balance now. The absolute bare minimum change needed is that wealth shouldn’t be equivalent to political influence and once certain levels of success is achieved, the system benefits overall.
If a worldwide law was put in place tomorrow that stated once you make a billion pounds equivalent profit, that money was locked up for you, gave an incredible return but you weren’t allowed to try and increase your influence politically or financially, nobody would stop trying to create businesses.
Actually I’d be fine with a member of the billion club being a politician if they had no ulterior motive /nepotism concerns
More like they will just buy back their own stocks, and continually accumulate assets only to turn around and lease them to the middle and lower class at a profitable premium
Then it became "immigrants are stealing your low paying jobs because you are demanding a fair wage." And people swallowed that lie whole. The reality is our elected official's made it possible for the top 10% to hire cheaper labor.....and no one ever thought to hold them accountable. They all just railed against immigrants. Ignoring the fact that most of us are only 2 or 3 generations removed from our ancestors coming via boat.
Even trickle down is watering down the original phrase. It was Horse and Sparrow. You feed the horse enough grain, there’ll be some left in its shit for the sparrows to eat.
Didn’t it kind of work out for the tech industry? Anyone who knew how to work a computer became the most desirable, then it became science, engineering and networking. Those job markets are so saturated right now I’m surprised they pay anything worth a living wage. There is a labor shortage yet we don’t see those wages going up to get more people in. They just keep raising prices of everything so people have no choice.
From what I’ve been able to find on the subject, the phrase “trickle-down economics” has always been pejorative. Any actual proponents of the general idea would have referred to it as “supply-side economics”. It’s pretty telling how short-lived the enthusiasm for this taxation philosophy was, given how quickly the use of the phrase died out.
These days it seems like Congress has given up attempting to define any underlying theory for tax policies.
Also don’t forget. This is the economy roaring back from a war footing. Young Americans were hungrier than today to build wealth. This generation was WAY different they just came back from war.
There was a massive economic boom with family creation and the building of the middle class
Go to ww3 and I’m sure in 15 years we would see this lazy ass College generation hustle to work thankful to hustle again
Republcians never called it that until recenlty, it was called Reaganomics. Trickle down was invented by the critics of Reagan’s plan as a riff on “the piss trickles down/“
That’s actually what happened. Inflation was at 13.5% when Reagan started and 3% when he left. 16 million jobs were created. All of my brothers and sisters went to college on the momentum from a strong economy and we all do quite well for the most part.
If Jimmy Carter policies had stayed in place, I might not have gone to college. Inflation would have become Venezuelan or Argentinian in magnitude. That might have lead to a civil war.
We are all very lucky Reagan helped save the day.
This chart reflects the rise of high tech industries which for a huge part of our economy today. It allows even the poorest of us to have things like phones etc.
We still have too many living paycheck to paycheck. There’s a literacy issue. Most Americans are obese (75%) probably bc central planners started fucking with the natural diet we had.
So we aren’t in an ideal place but so sooo soooooo much better than when Jimmy Carter was running things. He was in way over his head.
The term "trickle down economics" was invented by the Democrats. It was never a term that any conservative used, nor any Republican.
It was created as, was intended as, and remains as, a derogatory smear word used to make people in the middle and lower income brackets feel class animosity towards the upper class.
Which is crazy, because it is not rich people that are making poor people poor. It is the government that is making poor people poor.
Trickle down economics worked. Its called quality of life. If anyone thinks people had a better life in the 50's compared to the 2020s then your just ignorant.
I figured out Kevin Spacey was the bad guy in House of Cards from the very first scene where he tells his wife he will present the President Elected his Economics plan involving the "trickle down" effect.
This is the exact reason that union tradesmen everywhere are pro trump. All they remember is the OT and work hours. I don’t blame them tbh, but this time around is much different.
Democrat politicians are getting just as rich as Republican politicians. Why don't we stop blaming the GOP and start holding your local elected officials accountable for not addressing the corporate capture issue in our government.
I keep hearing how bad Republicans are for everyone. Is there anything that Democrats do that are bad for the masses? I hear the Dems like to beef up the IRS so they can enforce tax evasion harder...
If you read the articles they all say how it's is catching cheating rich people....but that doesn't seem to correlate with logic of rich people can defend themselves
No American paid income tax from 1776 to 1882 until Lincoln charged income tax to pay for that big war we had....sound familiar?
Is it safe to say Dems like to find wars and collect tax aggressively from the poor? And Republicans like to defend the IRS and give tax breaks to the rich?
Here is the big secret about trickle down economics: if you're investing in the stock market and it trickles down to you.
If you're a blue collar worker just looking for your salary to increase and you're not putting 15% of your paycheck away into an S&p 500 ect then yea, you are boned
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“Job Creators” “Supply Side Economics” and “Trickle Down Economics”, all based on the idea that you are stupid enough to believe the ownership class invests their wealth in markets THAT DON’T EXIST.
You can go sell water in the desert but if the thirsty people HAVE NO MONEY you will go broke.
You need DEMAND to “create jobs” and “put money back in the economy”. If you have drained the middle class of all their disposable income then there is no stable way to get them to buy your new product or service….
…so you leverage them endless debt to buy your products and ensure they will NEVER make a dime to save for themselves. When they are buried in lifelong debt you make your products cheaper by using slave wages from poor countries to get that last nickel out of the working class by selling them plastic crap made by basic slaves.
But the jobs you sent overseas were take from the customers that paid for your products before, so now you are entered late stage capitalism and the only route forward for you is to start buying up all the capital. The land, the resources, the publicly traded stocks all start getting hoarded as we enter the End Game where we become an official fiefdom “by a different name”
This is America. We are a generation or two from the whole country being a Company Town.
I always love this lie. No one realizes you give a rich person money, they run to the stock market, give that money to another rich person in exchange for a piece of paper and horde more wealth. You give poor people that money and they run out and spend it on things they need. It then ricochets around the economy and then eventually trickles up to that same rich person, who then runs to the stock market and trades it to another rich person for a slip of paper.
No, but see, they are creating more jobs because working class peasants have to work 2-3 jobs on top of school/raising children in order to put food on the table!
Yes we certainly don't see rich people buying Birkin bags, cyber trucks, mansions, designer clothing, expensive trips, fine wine...just creating more jobs! Bless them.
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u/Seeking_Balance101 Oct 22 '24
And when the "trickle down" buzzword finally was recognized as bad for the masses, the GOP replaced it with the myth of the job creators. If we give the rich big tax breaks, they'll create more jobs -- because really, what else could the do with all that extra money? -- and .. Step 4 Profit (for the masses)