Well, duh. If you can't even fund enforcement for investigating wealthy tax cheats, not only is there a wealth transfer from everyone else to the wealthy via unbalanced tax burdens, it's also an indication of how deeply captured by wealthy interests out government truly is.
20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
21–30 of 444 posts
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#22I 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…
You seem incredibly naive. People who earn $1m+ salaries do not work long hours or make sacrifices. You will never be wealthy if this is what you think. Most CEOs that I've known are out the door well before everyone else.
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#23Trickle-down economics didn't start with Reagan. One reference to it from 1896:
> There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.[19]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics
See also:
> Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy—what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: 'If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.'[33]
* Ibid.
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#24> Indeed, the richest 10% of the world's population hold 76%, or two-thirds of all wealth.
Math is hard:-(
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#25Bit of a giveaway to write ' demolished the myth of 'trickle-down'. I am not familiar with the authors apart from Thomas Pickety. However would one seriously expect any other conclusion from him? He and the other authors (if they inserted the word 'myth') had an agenda and naturally, produced a report validating it.This is not to say there are no serious issues with the 98% of wealth distribution. I should not use the latter word because it implies a zero sum game for wealth which is not the case. It's otherwise known as the Pie Fallacy of wealth. It's out there and greedy rich people have grabbed the lion's share. Many people still believe this.
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#26The article makes a weird jump between pointing to global wealth inequality and claiming that this disproves trickle-down effects.
But trickle-down doesn't claim that wealth differences between rich and poor should decrease! Rather, it's about absolute gains, where poor people get higher incomes the richer other people are. (I.e. increasing wealth inequality is good if it is the rich getting richer, instead of the poor getting poorer.)
A disproof would be something like finding a lot of poor people who got poorer as everyone else around them got richer.
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#27I 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 elimi…
It’s not a straw man at all. The Fed explicitly justifies QE and the rest of their monetary insanity on the basis of the “wealth effect”. They believe asset price rises will create a feeling of wealth which will generate additional spending. They know that these asset price prices disproportionately benefit a wealthy minority. This is trickle-down economics.
This is your opinion. The Fed never "explicitly" said QE was for "tricke-down".
You are equating the "wealth-effect" with "trickle down" - they are not the same.
The Fed described the wealth effect of stable home prices because people, at the time, were re-financing their homes and taking home-equity loans, which created spending.
Another "wealth-effect" are the stimulus checks. Are you suggesting those too are "trickle down".
The reality is that having more money stimulates spending. Trickle down specifically means only giving the RICH more money (traditionally in the form of tax breaks).
You comment completely conflates these two different notions.
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#28I 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 elimi…
>I haven't heard a politician advocate trickle-down since the Reagan era
Which country are you from? Certainly not the US, are you? It's called "cutting taxes" these days, with the tax cuts being mostly applied to the ultra rich.
The entire Republican party economic agenda still preaches trickle-down. If only because they are doing everything they can to prevent Reagan's trickle-down policies from being reverted.
> 2020 will always be known as an economic outlier. It's like selecting 2008, or September 2001.
Sounds like we're reliably getting an "outlier" every decade, huh.
Also, outlier by what metric? That's a non-sequitur. Every year is an outlier in some way.
2017 was the only year with a total Solar eclipse, for example. It's an outlier!
You need to specify the metric by which 2020 is an outlier, and how it can be biasing the study towards the conclusion that the paper reaches, otherwise it's no better than excluding 2017 for the Solar Eclipse reasons.
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#29Ahh, 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, s…
What's a financial instrument ? Usually a debt (a stock, a bond) which makes others live. Even to buy a house you need to give money to someone else who uses it for their own retirement or whatbot.
If the millionaire receives gold and bury it in his garden, sure, but if he puts it in a bank or an instrument, chances are you're paid by it.
And sure, giving money to non value added non productive endeavour like you propose works, but who gives this money? Wait a bit eventually all people do is pay taxes to receive money to pay taxes: you need an escape valve, something more valuable to happen, than just feeding hoboes with money.
But granted, trickle down has never been hosing down. A trickle it is and it's better if you can produce clear visible value that compensate you even if millionaires arent involved. Like say, make bread or cut hair...
Re: 20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’
#30In a watershed, rain falls and distributes water far and wide. It then trickles downward to where the water is most concentrated.
This one is easy. If the monetary system was a watershed, the rich would be at the bottom. You can't dump a billion litres at the mouth of the Amazon and reasonably expect it to make its way to the rest of the rainforest.