20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’

I guess I’m not surprised that a bunch of folks who have made a career out of advising politicians on income inequality….discovered income inequality in their study.

The two questions in my mind are:

1. Should we trust the government to spend the money more wisely than the folks who earned it? Or said another way, how do you combat the almost inevitable corruption you see with large government spending? 2. What will incentivize people to work at insane rates if the vast majority of their income and wealth is taxed? Would I be willing to put in the long hours and sacrifices usually required to work up to a $1m+ salary if it’s taxed at a 90% rate?

I haven't heard a politician advocate trickle-down since the Reagan era.

This seems like one of those strawman political football arguments.

Also, the methodology here is a bit flawed. I think that economic data that cherry picks the start of the covid-19 pandemic is deeply flawed. 2020 will always be known as an economic outlier. It's like selecting 2008, or September 2001. These are data points that should be eliminated from your data set - not highlighted in your conclusions.

Seems like just another anti-billionaire political hit piece, frankly. No real substance.

Also, a nitpick - the STUDY didn't take 20 years. The DATA was from a 20 year period. The title builds the study up to imply far more effort than was actually expended.

Suckers work for salary's. The ultra wealthy avoid this through long term capital gains, depreciation, Roth IRA (peter thiel buying 2k worth of PayPal stock options and rolling that to a 5 billion 100 percent tax free personal wealth fund so long as he doesn't touch it until he's 59), and a myriad of other tools.

In general there will always be tools to avoid the brunt of the tax burden so long as you are earning through investments not salary. If you earn solely through salary you are destined do to never get off the rat race of high taxes.

1. ”More wisely” is crazy subjective and it’s hard not to get into a really unproductive conversation about it. The issue is more that money is hoarded rather than spent.

2. This is a similar argument to those claiming that electric cars will never work because “what if I want to drive 12 hours straight without stopping?”. It’s possible but an extreme outlier.

Ahh, the good old trickle-down, aka "piss in my eyes and tell me it's raining" (which is the only way trickle-down actually works).

It was pure mythology from the start; there's never been any basis for it to begin with. It's a pity we even have to debunk it like that.

Go figure, give a million hungry people $20 each, and see $20M return to the economy the next day as they spend it on food.

Give a billionaire $20M, see the money go into the fintech machine and pour out into offshore accounts, as the billionaire holds on to whatever financial product they bought forever as long as it appreciates faster than inflation.

Oh, and they'll spend $200 on a fancy dinner.

Cue Pikachu face when the economy doesn't improve.