Thursday, December 17, 2020

Trickle Down Doesn't Work - What A Shock


In January, Joe Biden will be president.  He will attempt to put Democratic policies and programs in place.  Mitch McConnell will lead Republicans in opposing any government spending beyond continuing Trump's wasteful budgets for the military.  Republicans will fight any measure to roll back the catastrophic Trump tax cuts that have benefited the super rich and massive corporations.  In the 1980s, led by a washed up Hollywood actor, Republicans championed the theory of "trickle down" economics.  They implemented massive cuts in the marginal tax rates of the ultra-rich and minuscule reductions to everyone else.  The result was inevitable.  The very rich got even richer and everyone else got the shaft.  

Tax cuts for rich people breed inequality without providing much of a boon to anyone else, according to a study of the advanced world that could add to the case for the wealthy to bear more of the cost of the coronavirus pandemic.

The paper, by David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London, found that such measures over the last 50 years only really benefited the individuals who were directly affected, and did little to promote jobs or growth.

“Policy makers shouldn’t worry that raising taxes on the rich to fund the financial costs of the pandemic will harm their economies,” Hope said in an interview.

For nearly 40 years, Republicans have pushed the con that cutting taxes on the super rich will benefit the entire economy.  It is a con that only benefits those same rich people and the very corporations that have used those tax breaks to move American jobs to low wage countries. 

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