Trickle Down Economics

Trickle Down economics has screwed over more poor people than polio and powerball, combined. The idea is a simple stupid one – in an attempt to help poor people get by with no health insurance, no education and no money, trickle down economics encourages the government to give tons of money to rich people who have those three things already.

It’s like instead of paying for your kid swimming lessons, you just give $1,000 to a guy with a yacht and hope that someone teaches the kid, unexpectedly.

This is Dumb People with Terrible Ideas. I’m your host, Eric Gray

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Trickle down economics, also called supply side economics, is a shell-game, three card monty magic trick scam scheme that makes rich people richer, keeps poor people poor, destroys the American economy and allows everyone to feel like they are doing good, except for the broke people who depend on GoFundMe to buy diabetes medicine.

Trickle Down economics was conceived by an economist named Arthur Laffer, a man who looks like wet food in the sink drain feels.

Arthur Laffer’s terrible idea makes sense… on the surface. By lowering income taxes on the rich, wealthy people keep more of their income… this inspires wealthy people to spend more which creates jobs for others . And Americans can spend it themselves instead of DC fatcat beaurocrats.

But a lot of things sound sensible, but aren’t true. Here are some examples:

It makes sense that fish don’t need oxygen because they live in water, but that’s not true.

It makes sense that to solve traffic jams in big cities, we should have more lanes. But more lanes causes more traffic jams. It’s been proven.

Just because something sounds intuitive, doesn’t mean it’s accurate. Bulls don’t hate the color red, you can’t get warts from a toad, eating pop rocks and coca cola won’t make your stomach explode, and history has proven that lowering tax rates on the rich to trickle rhat money down to help the poor, doesn’t work.

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Tax breaks to millionaires don’t trickle down. The money stays with the millioniares, like STD’s with Charlie Sheen, or racism with Tucker Carlson.

If Jeff Bezos gets a tax break on his billions of dollars of income selling dildos made in a Chinese children’s sweatshop, he isn’t going to suddenly *spend more*. He might invest it, have it sit in a money market account or a savings account or stocks, but he’s not going to buy another yacht with that tax break BECAUSE HE ALREADY HAS THE MONEY TO BUY THAT YACHT.

If Bill Gates gets an extra zillion bucks, he’s not going to buy another house- because he already has the money to buy a house. Tax breaks for the rich is like giving a food to a full person, or giving an air-conditioner to an Eskimo, or a TV show to Jay Leno.

However, if you give tax breaks to middle class or poor people, what happens?

They spend it. Poor people spend 100% of their disposable income. So does much of the middle class. Every extra dollar these folks get goes straight to food, or medicine, or braces for the kid. That money, given via a tax break, or even better, just straight cash homie, circulates through the economy multiple times.

If your only nutrition comes from a half empty beer can filled with cigarette butts, because you’re broke AF, any dollar you get will trickle all over the place, flows actually, because you will spend the shit out of that money on a twinkie or Vienna sausages or whatever, trickle down? Hell poor people spray their cash through the economy like a 15 year old boy getting to third base the first time, because broke folks actually spend the money and create jobs and economic activity.

Extra money to the wealthy? It barely circulates once because they don’t spend any of it. They save it or invest it, it remains hidden, safe and away from scrutiny, like their prenup or third mistresses fourth abortion, which creates zero new jobs.

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California cowboy and B-list actor, President Ronald Regan, adopted supply side economics with a fervor that he usually reserved only for denying AIDS was a thing.

In 1981, he passed a huge tax cut, skyrocketing our nation’s yearly deficit while presiding through a great economic expansion in the 80’s. Everyone worked, everybody had fun tonight like Wang Chung sang about, the stockmarket went nuts and everyone had money for cocaine and hookers.

Which seems like an income tax cut works, right? Until President Bill Clinton came along, raised taxes on the wealthy, the economy grew just as fast while erasing the nation’s yearly deficit, bringing a balanced budget to America for the first time since your granddad looked sexy, naked.

And this has happened time and time again.

Texas Cowboy and least favorite Bush son George W. Bush cut taxes, another huge tax cut, and the economy cratered into a 2008 financial crisis, approaching the great depression.

President Barack Obama raised income taxes on the wealthy, the economy got better.

President Donald Trump lowered income taxes on the wealthy, and the economy cratered again.

Eisenhower had high taxes, the economy did great, so did FDR recovering from the Great Depression, had high taxes, the economy soared.

These higher taxes, funded the goods and services that helped poor people get jobs, get educated and be safe and well. If you’ve ever seen the soup lines, in old black and white photos during the great depression, that was taxpayer funded help to poor folks- real unfortunate time for America, but then the social safety net WORKED.

Lowering taxes on the wealthy results in a crashing of the economy caused by a lack of government intervention due to lack of funds. If you raid the social safety net to give Oprah Winfrey another half-million, that social safety net loses enough money to feed 2,000 hungry people for a month.

Supply Side economics- trickle down economics, just different terms for the same shit sandwich, was based upon a lie… that giving money to rich people helped poor people somehow. But back to George W. Bush, who took this idea to an entirely different level of insanity

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George W. Bush, the LArry of the Bush family’s Three Stooges Presidential candidates, introduced the idea of funding faith-based initiatives.

Just like he believed that lowering taxes on the rich helped poor people (it doesn’t), he believed that giving money to churches to help feed the hungry or heal the sick was a better idea than just giving the money to the hungry or sick people directly.

Government programs that were designed to help the poor were cut, or partially defunded, and that money went to faith-based programs in churches to do the same thing.

But the more hands this money has to pass through, or trickle down from, means the more opportunities wealthy people have to take a cut of it.

So what *was* a $200 grant paid to a single mother to buy groceries, instead became a $200 grant paid to a church – which took a taste of it, then delivered 100 bucks of soup and crackers to the single mother’s home.

It is the most inefficient way to provide for anything, anywhere, in the entirety of human history.

If you or I want to buy a book, we go to a bookstore and pay 12 bucks for it. We don’t order through a church, and then buy only a CHAPTER of the book because the church kept 10 dollars of the book money to pay for their new steeple.

Plus, George W. Bush, who looks like a muppet made to teach children about lesbians, was giving tax dollars (OUR TAX DOLLARS) to organizations that didn’t pay any taxes at all.

So let’s follow the money. Taxpayers pay taxes. Those taxes are given to churches, which pay zero taxes. The church takes a cut, and delivers a much lesser amount to people for food or shelter, than if the government just gave the cash to the people directly.

So, with trickle down economics, you pay rich people in hopes that it will help poor people, and with faith-based initiatives, you give tax money to churches that don’t pay taxes, in hopes that it will help poor people.

There’s a giant line of people in America that need healthcare, medicine, education, housing- you name it! Food! Clothing! And at the front of that line? It’s the rich folks, always the rich folks, getting their knob polished first.

Think about it this way… if your mobile home catches on fire, do you want the fire department to spray water on it directly? Or water the lawns of nearby mansions with the hopes that it will eventually trickle down to your burning shell of a singlewide?

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An entire industry of egghead economists eagerly encouraged elected officials to lower income taxes as a solution to any challenge, problem, good news, bad news, world event, world war, world of warcraft tournament or even if nothing happens at all.

…and the biggest tax cut always goes to the people that have plenty of income, already.

It’s like a game of Monopoly that you get to play with your friends, but you come in after all the properties are bought and hotels are everywhere. While your friends are already Monoploly rich, and getting richer, you’re money is spent slowly over time just to survive. Around the board you go, money and favors and benefits going to your buddy that owns Park Place and Boardwalk, while you slowly drown in debt. And then you lose.

Trickle-Down economics does the same thing, only the guys that own everything get an extra $1000 for passing GO… plus your share, too, and don’t worry, by giving it to these monopoly superstars, it will surely get *you* out of poverty right?

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Trickle Down economics is a scam, but it’s a scam perpetuated by the most influential and powerful people in America. Trying to debunk this bogus economic theory to a rich person is impossible, because his very livelihood- his existence, really- depends on that rich person *not* understanding it.

Those with money and mansions and jets and vacation homes in Italy are not evil; Being rich doesn’t make you a bad person. But the system that protects their profits at the expense of the less fortunate certainly is.

Poor people don’t need or want a handout- most of the time, they just want a meal. Or a job. Or a place to sleep other than a sidewalk.

But if handouts are being, ya know, handed out, why trickle it down through the wealthy to the poor instead of just helping poor people out directly?