Remember Ronald Reagan and his "Reaganomics"? Reagan espoused the "trickle-down" theory, supposedly scribbled on a napkin by the young (and previously relatively obscure) economist Arthur Laffer, with his "Laffer curve."
The idea was that tax cuts and other economic policies that would help large businesses and rich individuals get richer would ultimately benefit everybody, because the benefits to them would "trickle down" the ladder to lower income levels. The rising waters would float everybody's boat--or so the theory went.
What happened is that under Reagan, the U.S. national deficit rose to unprecedented levels--a fact that those on the Right who are lambasting Obama for a rising deficit are conveniently ignoring.
Now, since the numbers are in, we can see similarly that the Bush economic policies, such as the famous "Bush tax cuts" that are now up for renewal, and that had the most benefit for the rich, hurt the total U.S. national income.
Here is an article by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Reich on that subject:
www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-super-rich-get-richer_b_737792.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=092410&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry
If you want to go into the economics of it more deeply (and you have patience), here is an article replete with tables (in .pdf format).
www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/CHAS-89LPZ9?OpenDocument
Here is an article that shows the lasting, systemic harm to America's economic structure that was done by Reagonomics:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-white/rethinking-reaganomics-wh_b_749839.html
Copyright (c) 2010 by Richard Stein
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Yes I remember this so-called trickle down business. Reaganomics got so stopped up somehow and somewhere the imaginary steady stream became no more than a well thought out tinkle by the wealthy on the American middle class and working poor. Personally I don't trust American wealth with being fair, impartial, or necessarily even diplomatic. I don't want my social security benfits contingent on their rubber stamp any more than I believe that corporate strength and monies should be able to buy American policy let alone our White House.
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