Haven't there been a lot of research papers over the past 20 years all saying trickle down economics is a scam (with more polite words)?
this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2026
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A company made $1k extra.
In order for you to get a raise, they are first going to give your boss $1k.
Now they can't afford to give you a raise.
The end. That's it. That's trickle down economics. Nothing else happens.
If I made $500k USD a year tax-free, it would take me
- 2 years to become a millionaire
- 2000 years to become a billionaire
There's no way what billionaires contribute to the world is worth 2000 times more than someone making $500k. It is not possible that their """labor""" is that valuable. And most of the billionaires have multiple billions, so their "value" is orders of magnitude more. The system is and has always been broken.
three years to a millionaire, unless you live for free. taxes ain't your only expense.
Sure. The point isn't to detail out a budget or a guide of how to get there (you can't), it's to demonstrate that billionaires are thousands of times richer than what most people might consider "rich." It's simple on purpose.
Everybody currently has to pay bills, including billionaires, so it's moot; bogging the example down with unnecessary details needlessly obfuscates the core point.
They’ll argue that it’s because of risk and because of their “ideas” but it takes about thirty seconds to see that there’s never a real risk and that there ideas are verifiably awful.
The risk is what gets you started, once you're already a billionaire, it's as safe as can be.
If I made $500k USD a year tax-free, it would take me
2 years to become a millionaire
2000 years to become a billionaire
This is a very simplistic way of looking at personal income, as it doesn't consider the value of money. You really want to look at PPP (Purchasing Price Parity).
Consider, for instance, the impact that a high rate of inflation has on income and wealth. If you're living in Chile right now, with an 11% inflation rate, and your income scales with that inflation rate, then you can become a billionaire in 67 years. But, of course, that means costs are exploding as well. So that billion dollars doesn't feel like a billion dollars 67 years later.
Now consider that we've seen the US Stock Market doing an average 14% return over the last 10 years. So that $500k of recurring principle gets you to billionaire status in a mere 58 years. Some of these billionaires are getting ROI at much higher than 14%, thanks to their access to low-interest loans, government contracts, and below-market capital.
What has the US economy actually added over the last decade? What justifies the numerical growth in value? The dirty truth is that "billionaires" are just folks who got to ride the exploding price wave.
There’s no way what billionaires contribute to the world is worth 2000 times more than someone making $500k.
It isn't a question of contribution but of access to large pools of credit, interest accruing materials, and high return labor. What we have is a new kind of socio-economic enclosure, by which a select few people gain special privileges through social networking. Getting that explosive rate of return on a relatively meager upfront investment propels you into the billionaire class in a short amount of time.
But to get that access, you need social connections. Which is why folks like Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg could catapult themselves into the billionaire class while you're still sitting around with your genitals in your hands.
Billionaire is an entirely relative measure. What you can buy with a billion dollars is diminishing at the rate that new billionaires are minted. FFS, you can't even buy a basketball franchise for a billion dollars anymore.
direction is wrong, it trickles up
And yet the voters fall for it like Charlie Brown kicking the football.
If trickle down worked the way Reagan's crew pretended, the government would be flush with cash instead of neck deep in debt.
the world gaining 400 billionaires last year would have set off an economic boom
given everyone raises
and lowered our prices
That doesn't logically follow. Economic growth goes hand-in-hand with price inflation, as increases in spending power run up against natural resource and labor constraints. Once you've picked over the low-hanging fruit, the cost of the next unit will rise.
What we're seeing in Western Nations is a global rebalancing of wealth that's coming at the expense of our own elevated position. And while we're seeing that rebalancing, we're watching a handful of insulated elites continue to enjoy higher-than-expected quality of life that we assumed we were going to be entitled towards.
But if you're living in the Global South? Particularly in the BRIICS states? You're finally getting to enjoy the fruits of industrialization, centuries after it began. As the US hegemony breaks down and we move back to a multi-polar world, the resource rich states are seeing a windfall not enjoyed since the end of the 2nd World War.
And, as a consequence, the US has scrambled to claw those gains back, either through direct military intervention (Iran, China, the East African states) or through espionage and domestic regime change (Latin America, the Philippines, Eastern Europe).
Our fumbling grasp at a retreating position as global hegemon is destroying the supply chains that made the globe wealthier. And that's adding pressure to prices, both domestically and globally, even as its inflating wages and spurring growth.
So it's a much bigger story than the simple Reaganite math of "Trickle Down Make Big Number Go Up". We're transitioning to a new global economic model of more egalitarian wealth and uniform industrialization. But we're making the transition in one of the worst ways possible - through war, through ethnic cleansing, and through degradation of legal trade and travel.
Trickle down works just as intended, people just misunderstand what it means.
See, when it rains, water trickles down, to the ocean, where all the water already is.
Just like money is doing.
Yes, except that what they're describing is capitalism. "Trickle-down economics" is just a made-up excuse to let capitalism continue doing capitalism.
It's still funny how many bootlickers there are I see on social media defending billionaires who left because they don't want to pay taxes.
"The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands."
- Will Rogers (1932)
If we don't pivot to Trickle Up Economics, we will pivot to Robin Hood Economics, and that usually comes with guillotines and whatnot.
They know it doesn't work.
Even as they swear it does work. They'll look right into your eyes and say it with all sincerity. They know.
It 100% works though.
It's just the point is actually to make the rich richer.
George H W Bush even called it "voodoo economics". But when he gained the presidency, he continued the practice.
And they always knew right from the start. It was simply a lie.
And we've known it for nearly a century. Before it was called "trickle-down economics" it was called the "horse and sparrow theory"; if you feed the horses more oats, more will spill out for the sparrows to eat.
Problem is, everyone already knew "horse and sparrow theory" was complete bullshit, so they needed a new name, and "trickle-down economics" was the one they chose.
People are falling for the same trick by a different name.
"spill out" as in the horses poop has undigested oats and the sparrows have to pick through shit for scraps.
Yup. To the point it was utter bullshit, when George Bush Sr. (remember him?) was running against Reagan in 1979, he called the "trickle-down" theory "voo-doo economics".. and he was right. Once it became obvious he wasn't going to get the nod for President, he was tapped by Reagan who chose him as his running mate, to get him to shut up about it and the rest is history.
I've been saying for decades, we're now in the deep voo-doo doo-doo.
That’s the thing about stealth class warfare being waged by the parasite class against the people. It’s been going on throughout most of history.
The rare glimpses where workers see through it and act create opportunities for lasting prosperity.
Is debating “trickle down economics” really still a thing? People were already calling bullshit when Reagan was spouting this shit in the 80s.
It is. Everytime you hear someone say 'this is good for the economy' or 'our economic growth has slowed down' or 'the GDP has grown by suchandsuch percent this year' they are assuming trickle down economics work. That is because you might have a mental image of the economy being made up of small buiseness owners in your head while in reality ownership of things that benefit from a growing economy is largely in the hands of a small amount of people. In the US for example the top 10% of people own 70% of all of the countries wealth while the bottom 50% own about 1%.
Wealthy peoples' wealth also is made up of investments in company's to a larger extant than poorer people who have a larger percentage of their wealth made up of cash, houses, cars and other such 'real' things which don't benefit from a good economy. This wealth disparity exists in most countries to varying degrees. Globally speaking it's even more egregious.
Your source link doesn't work and I'm extremely skeptical of whatever data is being used in that graph. A simple Google search will show numerous studies have shown an extreme increase in wealth inequality in the US has gotten much worse over time. Every other graph I can find reflects this reality.
So unless you can provide an actual source that can be scrutinized, I'd recommend everyone reading this to take it with a massive grain of salt.
There is still a lot of people in this world still believe in that, particular the moderately wealthy, fortunate one, but not too wealthy to know it's a bs that helps them amass wealth.
a lot of the nutcases on the right don't even bother with the sales pitch anymore. they just take the money, cut the rich guy's taxes, fuck over the little guy.. just for fun and profits.
So is trickle down housing. Building luxury apartments and hell boxes while saying that they will trickle down in 30 years are also scams.
The only thing trickling down is their piss
It's insane we have to disprove a nonsense theory pushed by the media narrative, the onus of proof should be on them to prove trickle down was ever real and not just a gaslighting technique.
Well duh there's only so much money. Where do you think they're getting their money from?
I notice conservatives geniunely believe the system is working as good as it can, and that trying anything else would be bad.
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Just one more bro, just one more tax cut. I promise bro, this time it will trickle down, just one more tax cut! I know corporate taxes are at the lowest point in history, but just one more bro and it will happen!
Trickle-down economics worked because it turned a steady stream into a trickle, and now we need a flood
When we get one, it'll be called "tinkle-down" economics - guess why.