• ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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      22 days ago

      Wealth isn’t held, or taxed, in income. Taxes on the wealthy are dodged or gamed away. Cut them or raise them, the actual wealth won’t be targeted through income.

    • PineRune@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      But my Maga coworker just told me she wants to make everything more expensive! Now I don’t know who to believe; you both sound equally sensible. /s

  • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    It’s by design. But in a serious country, serious world, or amongst serious people, we would’ve been laughing at the “Laffer curve” the moment Laffer ejaculated it into the napkin he first wet dreamed it upon.

    But instead because we’re both as laughable as the curve itself and because the rich, industrial asshats in this country were foaming at the mouth for a thin, arguably objective, seemingly mathematical piece of horseshit to cover their “steal from the poor and give to the rich” policy preferences, reproductions of Arthur’s ejaculate were disseminated like it was the fucking Mona Lisa.

    It should never be said that conservatives are conservative in the normal, adjective sense of the word. For the last fifty years, they’ve been tearing at the fraying seams of society and have been using “trickle down economics” as their seam ripper, while simultaneously blaming anything and everything other than their objectively horrific policies for the havoc wreaked.

    • undergroundoverground@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Oh, the laffer curve is just fine. The issue is, the people who choose to missuse it deliberately or through utter ignorance never mention that the X value is about 90%. As I always say to those types whenever they bring it up:

      “Theh all want to talk about the laffer curve, right up until you have to explain to them how hight the X value is. Then, as if by magic, they suddenly don’t want to talk about it anymore and never agreed with it in the first place.”

      The real problem with economics, imo, is that they always presume inequality to not exist, in order to make the calculations work. The reason being that, if you accept that inequality exists and add it to the pot, as it were, the answer always comes out as “the problem is inequality.”

      However, that doesn’t justify tax breaks for the rich or their rampant greed and exploitation. So, we pretend its non-existent and, tbf, in a wold with no inequality what so ever, where only the best rise to the top and anyone could be rich, if they worked for it and it wasn’t a closed shop, most of neoliberalism would be absolute genius.

      Of course, the problem is that, in the real world, inequality not only exists but is the definining feature of our economy.

  • warlaan@feddit.org
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    21 days ago

    I’ll never understand how this image wasn’t ridiculed from the start. I mean if you are talking about “trickling down”, wouldn’t the bottom be the place where the thing that is trickling down collects?

    Of course money trickles down, it trickles down from the poor to rich.

    • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      It was but everyone was hypnotized by that POS. People who criticized it when I was a kid were considered socialist. It was/is a backward southern town. These days its just another small methville.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    22 days ago

    Oh no … it did work … it worked spectacularly … for the top wealthiest people in the world

    They figured out that they could cut the amount of taxes they had to pay, collect even more wealth for themselves and convince everyone around them and all the poor people out there like you and me that it was all perfectly acceptable, and sensible and that we should all keep electing government officials to keep that system going while we all paid for it. The wealthiest figured out how they could keep their money and make us all pay for it. And they did it for 50 years. And they’re still doing it.

    I think it worked fantastic … for them.

    • NegativeNull@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      We just need to be more patient and tax-cut the wealthy even harder. Then it’ll properly start to trickle. Just a little longer

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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        22 days ago

        I agree … but the problem is … it took 50 years for us to get to this point and it will probably take 50 years or longer to get it back to a manageable level again. That is, if we take 50 years of consistently pushing back against the wealthy in the same way that the wealthy have been pressing the poor for the past 50 years.

  • MyOpinion@lemm.ee
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    22 days ago

    Almost like this was the plan all along. The wealthy looking after their own interests to their benefit.

  • deegeese@sopuli.xyz
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    22 days ago

    Reagan pushed Horse and sparrow economics. If you give the horses enough grain, eventually the sparrows will get to eat a little out of their shit.

  • Jesus@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    Every couple years, another study that shows the same thing. The rich got richer and the middle class and poor lost.

      • forensic_potato@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        The middle class also doesn’t exist and makes as much sense as trickle-down economics does. It’s either working class or rich.

        • boonhet@lemm.ee
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          21 days ago

          The middle class definitely exists. They still share class solidarity with the poor.

          Middle class means you can lose your job, stay unemployed for a year or 2, and keep your home, keep the kids fed. You’re closer to the poor obviously, but you have some peace of mind. You’ve probably got some investments to provide a little bit of extra income to help you through the difficult days.

          Basically, I’d categorize rich vs middle class vs working class as “could never become homeless”, “unlikely to need to worry about becoming homeless unless something major happens” and “could easily become homeless if unemployed for a while”.

          Of course, if anyone’s wealth is actually trickling down, it’s the middle class, not the rich. Because the middle class actually spends some portion of their money instead of hoarding it.

          • forensic_potato@lemmy.world
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            21 days ago

            No, it really doesn’t exist. It’s an idea created by the rich to make some among the working class believe that they are different from the other working class people. But they are not. If you need to work to survive, you are working class.

            And please, don’t insult your intelligence or mine talking about trickle-down economy. That’s also not a real thing

            • boonhet@lemm.ee
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              20 days ago

              Middle class means being able to work your way up to not having to rely on work or pension to live.

              If you’re working class, you don’t even have that option. You work until you’re so old you have to retire, no long sabbaticals in between or anything. You won’t go traveling the world to do soul searching. Your kids are either taking student loans or GI bills or just not going to college.

              Middle class isn’t a 100k income in much of modern America though. Depending on location I’d say it’s more like 200k to 600k per household at minimum to be middle class. So yes, the middle class has shrunk considerably.

              • forensic_potato@lemmy.world
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                20 days ago

                That’s not what the middle class is. I’m not about to repeat myself. And the more you write on it, the more it’s clear that you don’t understand what you are talking about and never read anything on the matter but instead you’re just writing about your personal opinions on the matter. Please stop spewing the insane propaganda of “the harder you work, the richer you’ll be” and stop wasting my time