Where’s the Trickle?

Where is the trickle part of trickle down economics?  Since the 80s, the right has claimed that lower taxes for the wealthy will result in better economic conditions for everyone.  They said if the wealthy kept a bigger portion of their earnings, instead of paying that money in taxes to the government, the wealthy would create more jobs.  The logic was the wealthy would spend the additional funds on things that create jobs.  Unfortunately, that never happened.  While there may be validity in the theory, the reality is that when the wealthy save money on taxes, they do not spend those savings on job-creating things.  If anything, the money they saved is actually extracted from the economy and invested in various “paper” products that never create jobs.  On the other hand, when the wealthy pay more to the government in taxes, the government spends that money only on jobs.  In fact, if you look at government expenditures, virtually every penny spend by either local, state, or federal government goes to job creation.  If government funds are not spend on salaries for people employed by government the funds are spend purchasing various items used by government.  One only needs to look at the hue and cry from the defense industry that is facing a cutback in defense funding to see the extent government spending has an effect on job creation.  So, whenever you hear someone from the right talk about the benefit of low taxes, please ask that person the question, “where was the trickle when we last did that?” Ask them to explain the following:

CBO finds that, between 1979 and 2007, income grew by:

• 275 percent for the top 1 percent of households,
• 65 percent for the next 19 percent,
• Just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent, and
• 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.

In other words, 99% of working Americans experience income growth of less than 2% per year while 1% of Americans saw their income rise by almost 10% per year.  That is what the right calls trickle-down.  What they should do is rename supply-side economics gush up because nothing has ever trickled down to 99% of American workers.  Ask them to explain the explosive growth of people either in poverty or on the edge of poverty after 10 years of low taxes.  Ask them to explain the Bush record of job creation, the worst of any President since World War II, in spite of the tax cuts given the “job creators”.  Ask them to explain Romney’s assertion that Obama made the recession worse in spite of the extension of the Bush tax cuts, the payroll tax cut, and the tax cuts from the first Obama stimulus program.

Ask them, “where’s my trickle?”  Ask them, “when will the trickle, trickle down to me?”