Are those entirely separate things? Hardware development is expensive. Having the money to develop these things and iterate on them enabled them to begin as luxuries for wealthy people and evolve into things the rest of us can have.

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wat10000 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

“Trickle down” is about making the masses wealthier in general, not just making shiny new toys for them. It’s easy for the HN crowd to think that a cool new computer equates to wealth, but that’s not what most people consider it to be. Does cutting taxes for the rich allow the common person to buy better food, pay their mortgage off earlier, send their kids to better schools? That’s the question you need to ask about “trickle down,” not how big our TVs would be.

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ryao 7 days ago | parent [-]

If it results in businesses like Aldi, then yes. Aldi not only pays above market rates, but charges below market prices for quality food.

Honestly, I have to say that I am relatively happy with the things that I have these days because of obscenely wealthy people’s investments. I have a heat pump air conditioner that would have been unthinkable when I was a child. I have food from Aldi and Lidl, whose prices relative to the competition also would have been unthinkable when I was a child. I have an electric car and solar panels, which were in the realm of fantasy when I was a child. Solar panels and electric cars existed, but solar panels were obscenely expensive and electric cars were considered a joke when I was young. I have a gigabit fiber internet connection at $64.99 per month, such internet connections were only available to the obscenely rich when I was a child. I am not sure if I would have any of these things if the money had not been there to fund them. I really do feel like things have trickled down to me.

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wat10000 6 days ago | parent [-]

What’s the connection between wealthy people getting wealthier and businesses like Aldi?

I like electric cars and solar panels and gigabit fiber as much as the next person, but they aren’t wealth.

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ryao 6 days ago | parent [-]

Aldi is privately owned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi

If you shop there, you are enriching its owners. That is not a bad thing. The more money they have, the better they make things for people, so it is a win-win.

Note that Aldi is technically two companies since the family that founded it had some internal disagreement and split the company into two, but they are both privately owned.

That said, if wealthy people had not made investments, I would not have an electric car, solar panels or gigabit fiber. The solar panels also improve property values, so it very much is a form of wealth, although not a liquid one. Electric cars similarly are things that you can sell (although they are depreciating assets), so saying that they are not wealth is not quite correct. The internet connection is not wealth in a traditional sense, but it enables me to work remotely, so it more than pays for itself.

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wat10000 6 days ago | parent [-]

The fact that you’re enriching the owners by shopping there does not imply that enriching rich people will lead to more Aldis being created.

“Trickle down” isn’t just “rich people found companies” or “rich people buy gadgets when they’re still new and expensive.” It’s specifically about making ordinary people financially better off in a significant way by making rich people richer. It’s not about technology at all, and it’s not merely about rich people doing some things that benefit the rest of us. It’s a causal claim about rich people doing more things to benefit us, and it being a positive tradeoff, by making them richer.

	▲	6 days ago \| parent [-]
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neom 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're right to a degree in that they are somewhat coupled systems, the real economy operates in a gaussian of many economic theories, hence it's hard to model and all that. Never the less in traditional economic theory they are analyzed separately. The connection exists but it shouldn't be seen as validating trickle down as economic policy.

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conductr 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I would argue that technology diffusion would occur even without trickle down economics/tax policies. Even if they were taxed more heavily, there would still be people wealthy enough to buy the v1.0 flat screen, computer, DVD player, etc because wealth is still unevenly distributed and there are still some richer people in the population.

Trickle down economics is supposed to make poorer people more wealthy. Not suppress their wage growth while offering a greater selection of affordable gadgets.

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ryao 7 days ago | parent [-]

Would it have happened to the same extent? Also, describing these things as gadgets understates the extent to which they are beneficial, given that a gadget refers to a novelty by definition:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gadget

Among the many things that have become affordable for every day people because money had been present to fund the R&D are air conditioners, refrigerators, microwave ovens, dish washers, washing machines, clothes dryers, etcetera. When I was born in the 80s, my parents had only a refrigerator (and maybe a microwave oven). They could not afford more. Now they have all of these things.

	▲	conductr 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		I could ask the same of you. Do these things only exist because of trickle down? Do you have proof they wouldn’t have been invented and commercialized without it? I don’t expect either of us to be able the answer the questions posed. Nobody in the 80s was asking for any of these inventions. People were living their lives happily ignorant to a better future. For that reason, most of these things do amount to just gadgets. They have shaped our lives in a dramatic way and had huge commercial success by solving huge problems or increasing conveniences, but they are still nonessential. That’s the way I’m using the term, don’t really care what Webster has to say about it tbh as I’m perhaps being dramatic precisely to highlight this point. The continuation of R&D isn’t even a trickle down policy. If you’re a big manufacturer of CRT televisions, it’s in your interest to continue inventing better technology in that space just to remain competitive. If you’re really good at it, there’s a good chance you can steal market share. It’s good old fashioned business as usual in a competitive industry. I don’t see how they relate to one another. Not to mention that many things are invented in a garage somewhere and capital is infused later. Would this only happen if the rich uncles of the world benefited from economic policies aimed at making them rich? I think it would still find a way in most cases, good ideas typically always find a way. I don’t think a majority of gadgets can be linked to something like “brought to you by trickle down economics”.