Summations Only

Hi Straggler, We could try to eliminate as many variables as possible between governments implementing different economic policies.For instance, if we look at state economies, where the federal policies are constant and the federal benefits are constant, and the federal regulation of the economy is constant, then we should be able to see different state economies reacting to state economic policies.We have some 50 states to look at and see if there are other variables that need to be eliminated, and I would think we could build a trendency from several states.Does Alaska, giving oil income dividends to everyone count as a bottom up policy?Enjoy.

Hi Percy, People that do not accumulate any wealth spend 100% of their incomePeople that DO accumulate wealth spend less than 100% of their incomeSo IF we give the same total amount of dollars to those that do not accumulate wealth that trickle down advocates want to give those that DO accumulate wealth ...... THEN more of that money will be spent, AND they will also be sending it back into the economy more immediately than a system of investments that takes several transactions to get any money back into the economy.The other factor in the equation is that there are far fewer very rich than there are very poor so you cannot compare a single rich person to a single middle income or poor person, you have to compare the rich population to the middle income population and the poor population in order to judge the relative benefits. A better comparison would be 1 building at $20,000,000 versus 100 buildings at $200,000, so that we are talking about the same total expenditure versus benefit. AND because of the way things work (overhead, management, other fixed costs per building) there would be LESS benefits for the single house contract compared to the 100 house contracts.We are talking about benefit per dollar spent.Enjoy.

Hi Percy, Chuck77 and other trickle-down advocates If you want to stimulate the economy then you need to stimulate spending.If you want to use some tax funds for this purpose by distributing it to people ...People that do not accumulate any wealth spend 100% of their income, whilePeople that DO accumulate wealth spend less than 100% of their income,Therefore the most efficient stimulus system would be to distribute the funds to the people that do not accumulate wealth, as there is a 100% return on investment.This is why trickle down theory is a bad system of economic stimulus, not because trickle down does not occur, but because it is not as efficient as trickle up.If spending increases, then production will need to increase to meet the increased demand, and jobs will be created to meet that increased production.Giving money to people to increase production doesn't increase the spending nor the buying of the increased production -- instead it would tend to drive prices down, and then wages down without significant benefit to the economy.Enjoy.

Hi hooah212002 This is why you should send the stimulus to those that put all their earned income into the economy, those people that do not have an increase in wealth over the year versus those that do. This could happen to those at the margin, and those that don't have debts (delayed spending), but this would be a small fraction of the economic population in question, and the effect would be small for those that do cross over.Those that did cross over into a net accumulation of wealth would certainly realize a direct benefit from the stimulus, but they could also increase their spending compared to the previous year and end up at the same level.enjoy

Hi Percy No, the major complaint is that the purported reason for giving a bunch of money to the money hogs would result in a better economy and more money for everyone.Both are false.The major complaint is that the claim of giving money to the money hogs (people who accumulate wealth) is the best way to stimulate the economy.This is patently false, as only a portion of the money they are given is returned to the economy, while those who do not hog money (people who are not able to accumulate wealth or choose not to accumulate wealth) would return 100% of the same stimulus money to the economy AND that they would increase spending which is what improves the economy.It is not that wealth accumulation occurs
It is not that trickle down occurs
It is that trickle down does not improve the economy across the board for all peopleYou even reach this conclusion yourself: Inescapable. In your post Message 205 you posted this graph from Wikipedia article on US Income Distribution: We have a 40 year record of a consistent change in average slope across the board EXCEPT for the top 5%In the absence of any other cause for this change between income brackets which is consistent regardless of market ups and downs in both periods, then it is logical to conclude that this is due to this irrational policy.If you don't think this shows the poor performance of the trickle down theory to accomplish it's purported gains then you need to show some other universal policy or factor that has affected the lower 95% but not the top 5%.In Message 223 you replied If other effects are eliminated: what's left?There are no other policies or programs I am aware of that have last over this same period, and there are only rather normal market variations from year to year, and there still remains a sudden change in slope that began with the trickle down implementation and that has continued to this day.If something has not been eliminated what is it? Here's another diagram that shows a sudden change in slope: It seems to me that a correlation between the effect of the tax cuts to the lowered slope for the lower 95% is just as strong as the correlation between varve layers and 14C values for age and depth.My argument to the creationists is the same: if something else causes this correlation then what is it?Enjoy.

Hi Percy How aboutTrickle-down theory (or more correctly hypothesis) is based on the observations that (a) money spent on things transfers money from one person to the next, (b) that money spent by rich people transfers some money to people who are not as rich, and then makes the hypothetical conclusion that giving money to rich people benefits everyone else. An example of this hypothetical concept is to tax rich people at a lower rate than anyone else, and another example would be to bail out rich people when their investments go south, but not do the same for poor people.Perhaps you would care to add some additional bits to this to actually make it a valid logical argument, but I think we can start there.We can also say that both of these examples have been tried and that there is no discernible benefit to those at the bottom of the economic pyramid, that not everyone else has benefited, and that these indicate that this hypothetical conjecture is falsified.We can also note that not every transaction involves everyone, so you have to invoke some kind of "ripple effect" - that a coin thrown in a pool causes ripples that reach all other parts of the pool. The problem here being that the pool is so large (311 million?) that the ripple of one transaction is pretty unmeasurable at the far edge ... less than any single coin.We can also note that not all trickles are down, that as you move down the economic pyramid the trickle up becomes more and more likely, so that the effect on the lowest levels are damped or eradicated by the money moving back up.It should be a fairly simple mathematical analysis to determine how much one would need to spend to guarantee that everyone received a benefit ...Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : ...

Hi Percy Well we could always edit it ... to clarify it a bit more ....

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Trickle-down economics - Wikipedia
"Trickle-down economics" and "the trickle-down theory" are terms in United States politics often used by the American right to refer to the idea that tax breaks or other economic benefits provided by government to businesses and the wealthy will benefit poorer members of society by improving the economy as a whole.[2]

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bold underline added.Would you also agree that getting one penny would be the minimum benefit measurable, and that everyone benefiting would mean that 1 penny for the 99% of 311 million people would be $0.01 x 0.99 x 311,000,000 = $3,078,900 and this would be the theoretical absolute minimum -- that the transactions would be more of a skewed curve distribution centered towards the more wealthy end of the spectrum than the bottom and that you would need several times this amount for 1 penny to actually reach everyone?Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : .....

Hi Percy, That the "investment" in the rich would need to be in the billions of dollars for the 1% poor to see a dime -- if trickle down even works -- and a dime per year is not a significant change in economic fortunes.That once you get past average income, there as much or more forces that cause trickle-back-up and that these act to dampen and negate the effect of trickle down to the poorest 1%. This should be obvious to anyone that considers the probability of each transaction in a series to trickle up or trickle down.That "trickle-down economics" is a fraudulently false hoax perpetuated on the economically ignorant populations of the US.Putting it kindly.Enjoy

Hi everyoneWhy Rich People Don't Deserve Their Wealth. (That's Right, I Said It.) - Upworthy

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Why Rich People Don't Deserve Their Wealth. (That's Right, I Said It.)

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This quote is from the short article, The Self-Attribution Fallacy, by George Monbiot. ...

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From Monbiot's original article: "I am now going to bombard you with figures. I’m sorry about that, but these numbers need to be tattooed on our minds.

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Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%.

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Between 1979 and 2009, productivity rose by 80% , while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%.

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In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%.

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[This] is to suggest that the economy has been rewarding the wrong skills. [CEOs] are no more deserving of the share of wealth they’ve captured than oil sheikhs."

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Speaks volumes.Enjoy

Hi Percy, Except that money doesn't always trickle down when it trickles away. A more universal term to describe what happens to money when exchanged for products or services in the market place is that it "trickles away" from the spenders to the sellers. And conversely, "Trickle away economics" as in tax rebates for ALL spenders increases the amount of "trickle away" in the economy, is also not obvious, but is much more likely to improve the economy because it affects the whole spectrum of spenders, and the economy is based on spending money rather than accumulating wealth.In addition, giving tax rebates to net accumulators would have less benefit than net non-accumulators, as more money is returned to the spending mill that is the economy by the non-accumulators, so giving a fixed amount to all tax filers would have more benefit dollar for dollar than giving rebates only to the net accumulators.Enjoy

TRICKLE DOWN

Trickle down is only a small portion of the economyThis should be self-evidentWhat happens when you spend money is that it "trickles away" -- it goes from your pocket to somebody else's pocket/s.When the very rich spend money it is more likely to go down than up or sideways, although that still happens (stock investments, etc) to an appreciable degree.When the very poor spend money it is more likely to go up than down or sideways.This too should be self-evident.There is no guarantee that the effect of one person spending money travels very far, and certainly no reason to think that everyone would receive a penny of benefit from any transaction.If the money is channeled (not divided up) in one direction (say to pay off debts, from poor to rich) then it does not benefit anyone outside the channels.If the money is not channeled (divided up) in one direction, then the ripple effect will spread out to lower and lower benefits. A $3.11 million dollar expenditure spread to every one in the US (311 million population) results in a 1¢ benefit to everyone.This should be self-evident as well.If one wants to look at the end destination of trickle away money from spending, then one needs to look at where money is accumulated. Money that is not accumulated is still in the process of trickling away (up, down and sideways), and this only stops when it is taken out of circulation.Money is only accumulated by people that get more money than they spend.Accumulated money takes money out of circulation, and this actually harms the economy.Giving money to people that accumulate wealth means that only part of that money will enter the economy and the rest will be added to the accumulation pile. The accumulated funds only benefit the holders and not the economy.Giving money to people that do not accumulate wealth means that all of that money will enter the economy. Money that continues to be circulated, by trickle away (up, down and sideways), benefits the economy: the economy is the exchange of money for goods and services, not the accumulation of wealth.Thus if you want to stimulate the economy the money - dollar invested for dollar returned to the economy - would be better spent on the lower income brackets than on the top income brackets.And this should be blindingly self-evident.

TRICKLE DOWN "THEORY"

(Properly speaking this is not a theory, but an unsubstantiated hypothesis).The "theory" of trickle-down economics is that spending by the rich benefits everyone.This is based on the assumption that money only and always trickles down, which we saw above is just not true.Thus trickle down obviously cannot happen in any substantial way to benefit everyone in the economy, and the graphs we have seen on this thread show unequivocally that the very poor have not benefited from any of the trickle down policies that have been enacted, even if the benefits were on a slow boat to china.We see that the mortgage failures began because trickle down did not provide any significant benefit to lower income people, as was promised by the trickle-down proponents. The boat never came in. Those mortgage failures however trickled UP in a fast freight train.We also see that the massive bailout of the top income sector of the economy did not stop any of the foreclosures and continued failure of money to trickle down to the lower incomes.Billions of dollars have been invested in the trickle-down policies, and there is absolutely no visible benefit for the lower incomes. If anything the lower income brackets are worse off than they were before those policies were implemented.Trickle-down economics is a failed policy based on a false hypothesis, poor logic, and willful ignorance, delusion, or intentional misinformation.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : clrty