Summations Only

So - Just to be clear - You think that any growth in the economy at all is attributable to cutting taxes for the rich and the resultant increased productivity of the rich?The average US worker has increased productivity 100% and received an income increase of 20% but he should count him/her self lucky that the rich have trickled down the benefits of increased productivity?CS - How much of the increased productivity over the last 30+ years do you think is attributable to the top 5%...?How much of that increased productivity have the top 5% pocketed?What has trickled down?

Yet the data clearly shows where productivity gains are ending up. If increased national productivity ends up in the hands of the wealthiest disproportionately to their contribution to that increased national wealth, and such that the wealth of the nation is increasingly concentrated at the top, then what exactly is it that has trickled down?Money circulates. Sure. But that isn't the same thing as trickle down economics working. If a million of the poorest people buy Big Macs that pay the salaries of multi-millionaire McDonalds CEOs then trickle-up of money has indisputably happened. But so what? I am not sure a simple metric is possible given that we are talking about the proportionality of gains from productivity.If the wealthiest 5% are the entrepreneurial innovators that have driven the economy forwards over the last 30 years in a way that would have been impossible without their unique contribution then the sub 20% increase in real incomes of the 95% majority is a success for trickle down economics. The poorest have benefited from the insightful spending of money that they could not themselves have achieved if the same money had been re-distributed. The rich are responsible for the extra productivity and we all benefit from it. This would be trickle-down economics working.If however the 95% majority are responsible for the lions share of that 100% increase per person in increased national productivity and yet have only seen a 20% increase in real incomes then it is very difficult to see what has trickled down. Instead it seems like an unjustified siphoning off of increased wealth by the richest. This would be "trickle-down economics" not working. Arguably it would be trickle-up.Which scenario do you think most closely matches the reality of the situation?

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Paul Krugman noted in November 2011 that all American redistribution of income away from the bottom 80% has gone to the highest-income 1% -- and that a report looking only through 2005 found that almost two-thirds of the rising share of top 1% income went to the top 0.1% (the richests one-thousandth), who saw their income rise more than 400% from 1979 to 2005.

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Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

CS - How much of the increased productivity over the last 30+ years do you think is attributable to the top 5%...?How much of that increased productivity have the top 5% pocketed?What has trickled down? It is about lowering the tax rates for the wealthiest specifically rather than anyone else. It is the belief that there is some sort of natural distribution of wealth from the top down rather than the bottom up or the middle out. It also usually entails a whole heap of deregulation of the labour market as well. Because rather than protections for workers these are seen as barriers to the free-marketeers invisible hand and profit. Can you see that actively making the wealthiest wealthier so that you can both in-debt yourself to them and then give the bulk of your increased productivity to them as well leaves you in a inferior position to having that same money redistributed such that you can increase your own productivity and retain the fruits of that productivity?Why cut taxes for the very wealthiest rather than increase the spending power of your customers or increase the ability of a national investment bank to promote your own productivity-doubling entrepreneurial innovation?Why is placing the wealthiest as the both lender and the chief beneficiary of productivity either necessary or desireable? Precisely. So why focus tax and regulations at making the wealthiest wealthier unless you want to promote that snowball effect of disproportionate gains? You are back in Dr A's rising temperature in July terriotory...Why are you attributing economic growth to trickle down policies? Did other economies not grow in the last 30 years? No it's not. It's asking if the majority are better off than they would have been without such policies. Put it this way - If I am going to be poor and hard working I would rather be poor and hard working in a lot of countries other than the US (and the UK is going the same way).The economy relies on it's working population. Yet if the distribution of proceeds of growth for the last 30 years are to be believed we would be better off without the activity of the bottom paid 50% of the UK workforce than the 0.1% wealthiestI think if we (hypothetically) killed off 50% of the workforce and redistributed their wealth to the remaining 50% the productivity of the UK would be rather adversely affected.Yet if we (hypothetically) killed off the top 0.1 wealthiest and redistributed their income among the remaining 99.9% I doubt we would see any fall in national productivity at all.It's speculative (and I'm not suggesting we really kill anyone) but do we really think that the wealthiest are the "wealth creators" to that ridiculous degree or for any reason than because they (increasingly) hold all the wealth? Well they certainly show the proceeeds of growth going to the wealthiest. You can't disagree with that can you?So the question is how much of that growth is attributable to them rather than just the money that they, rather than anyone else, happened to have as a result of focussing policy at specifically making them wealthier?

I'm saying that unless their contribution to productivity is greater than the share of it they receive you have trickle up rather than trickle down.If the wealthy are receiving more wealth than they are creating what is it that is trickling down? Better off than what?For every 100 pounds of growth in the UK economy over the last 30 years the top 0.1% have seen 14 and the bottom 50% have seen 12.Are the bottom 50% better off than they would have been if policies which didn't concentrate wealth at the top had ben implemented instead? Look if you give all the money in the US to the richest person and then everyone borrows from him to do anything productive you could in a very fucked-up-way say that this individual was responsible for ALL of the economic activity and that anyone who received any benefit at all from economic activity did so because of his enabling role.But that would be bonkers wouldn't it?Yet in percentage terms that is pretty much what is happening.... Why does focusing policy on making the wealthiest wealthier rather than the middle or the bottom wealthier produce more economic benefit for society as a whole?If it doesn't - Then trickle down economics cannot be said to work.And the evidence strongly shows that when trickle down economic policies are implemented it is the richest who benefit rather than anybody else.

And the evidence shows that trickle down economic policies result in ever greater concentrations of wealth at the top which gives the wealthiest even greater political influence to shape economic policies to their own benefit.So we end up in a cycle of increasingly concentrated wealth providing ever greater political influence to concentrate wealth further.In short a sort of plutocracy. Which is, I would argue, not a situation compatible with trickle-down economics having worked. It certainly isn't the situation that proponents of trickle down economics put forth as the end result of such policies. Which is kinda the same as saying the wealthy are effectively untouchable when it comes to imposing tax legislation on them that they don't like.

I haven't said that anyone is "stealing" anything. Now who is being emotive and hyperbolic? My point here is exceptionally simple.If the wealthiest few at the top are receiving more wealth than they are creating then wealth isn't trickling down. It is trickling up. This simple statement is inarguable isn't it?Now have a look at our much cited graph again and ask yourself to what extent the proceeds of growth are being received by the wealthiest. Now ask yourself how much of that increased productivity has been created by the wealthiest.According to this graph we would need to attribute practically ALL of the growth to the top 5% for trickle down rather than trickle up of wealth to have occurred over the last 30 years. Personally I think technological progress is the main factor in increased productivity over the last 30 years. But I certainly don't think the wealthiest 5% of Americans are almost entirely responsible for technological progress over the last 30 years. Do you?In summary - I put it to you that since the introduction of trickle down policies about 30 years ago the wealthiest have received a greater portion of increased wealth than they have created and that wealth has therefore trickled up rather than down.If this is the case trickle-down economic policies obviously have not worked.

So you do actually believe that the 5% wealthiest in our graph are responsible for practically all of the technological progress and associated increases in productivity over the last 30 years?That is the only way to reconcile their huge gains from this increased productivity with the notion that wealth is trickling down rather than up. Science is the main driver of technological progress (and thus increased productivity). Do 95% of the population not contribute to publicly funded scientific research? Has publicly funded science not contributed to the increased wealth of the nation?If instead of implementing policies to make the wealthier even more wealthy we had instead spent that money on funding scientific research would technological progress and productivity really have suffered? 1) How productive do you think the nation would be without 95% of it's workforce?2) If you distributed the gains that the top have seen from increased productivity amongst the middle classes they might well buy stock. Less of it per person than the richest. But in greater numbers. Or they might well increase their spending. Thus increasing the profits of companies and thus their ability to invest. Or we could invest directly in research as mentioned above. There is no inherent reason why we have to make the wealthy wealthier to get investment is there?So the entire premise of trickle down economics is false on two fronts. We don't need to make the wealthiest wealthier (rather than anyone else) to get investment to increase productivity. And when trickle down policies are implemented we get trickle up rather than trickle down (unless you assume that virtually all productivity increases are due to the very top %s)Trickle down is busted.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Well said.And with reference to our much cited graph - How productive would the nation be without 95% of it's workforce?Yet - According to our graph combined with Percy's ideas about attributing wealth - 95% of the population are responsible for less than 20% of the 100% increase in productivity over the last 30 years.As long as the wealthiest receive more wealth than they create we have trickle-up rather than trickle-down.This seems pretty inarguable.

You can phrase it however you like.But if the wealthiest receive more wealth than they are responsible for creating then we have trickle-up rather than trickle-down don't we?This seems essentially inarguable.But you seem to be disputing it.Please clarify your position on this specific point.

Does this have anything to do with it? Edited by Admin, : Fix quote.

What definition? And if as a result of his risk taking that company (e.g. a "too big to fail" bank) ends up being a significant factor in a global recession and the effective destruction of huge amounts of national wealth who pays?Him? No.The taxpayer. Yes.Because as a result of trickle-down policies we have socialised risk and privatised profit for the very few.So even on a risk/reward basis trickle-down economics has been shown to fail dismally by recent banking events.

Well the tax burden has shifted onto the middle classes from the top and the middle classes gains from increased productivity have decreased whilst those of the wealthiest have increased. The more wealth the wealthy have the more they gain from increased productivity and the less wealth the middle classes have the less they gain from increased productivity.Wealth breeds wealth. The question here is why we think concentrating wealth in the hands of the already wealthy as per trickle-down economic policy is a superior method of wealth generation than placing it in the hands of others.You have yet to provide any reason for this to be the case.

A relatively lowly paid publicly funded research scientist facilitating technological progress has very arguably contributed more to increasing the nation's wealth than a team of highly paid stock-brokers whose average performance is indistinguishable from that of random chance. And A burger flipper on minimum wage has definitely contributed more to the economy than a millionaire banker who has played an active role in actually reducing the wealth of the nation. Simply by not having a negative effect.So this notion that one's salary or wealth is by definition indicative of ones contribution to increased national wealth is just risible.So we are back to my main point. If the wealthiest at the top are receiving more wealth than they are creating then we do not have trickle down. We have trickle up.The data clearly shows that the wealthiest at the top have received nearly all of increased national wealth over the last 30 years. But are they responsible for creating nearly all of this national wealth? If they are not then trickle-down economics does not work. Because it has had the very opposite effect to that claimed by it's proponents.Earlier in this thread the following exchange was had: But later it seemed to be forgotten. Here: We ALL financially contribute to the environment in which wealth is created. Without this environment stocks would be worthless and wealth creation would be all but impossible on the sort of scale we are talking about here. So (with reference to our much cited graph) the idea that 95% of the population can claim responsibility for a sub 20% share of wealth creation over the last 30 years is simply absurd. How productive would the nation be without 95% of it's workforce?Answer - Not very.So - No trickle-down hasn't worked. Because of the simple fact that wealth isn't trickling down. In terms of wealth received against wealth created all the data strongly suggests that wealth is trickling up.