“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.

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