Again, "trickle-down economics" was created by Will Rogers. He was never a policy maker, just a comedian trying to tell funny stories. Nor did he accidentally create a policy in a 10 minutes of rambling standup routine. If you listen to the routine you will realize that he was talking about things that had already happened. He wasn't some kind of hidden political visionary.

We can accept that "supply-side economics" is a policy rebranding, but it is not a rebranding of "trickle-down economics". That is abundantly clear. There has never been a policy known as "trickle-down economics".

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throw0101a 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> We can accept that "supply-side economics" is a policy rebranding, but it is not a rebranding of "trickle-down economics".

Reagan's people would disagree:

> Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 campaign for the presidency on a platform advocating for supply-side economics. During the 1980 Republican Party presidential primaries, George H. W. Bush had derided Reagan's economic approach as "voodoo economics".[16] Following Reagan's election, the "trickle-down" reached wide circulation with the publication of "The Education of David Stockman", a December 1981 interview of Reagan's incoming Office of Management and Budget director David Stockman, in the magazine Atlantic Monthly. In the interview, Stockman expressed doubts about supply side economics, telling journalist William Greider that the Kemp–Roth Tax Cut was a way to rebrand a tax cut for the top income bracket to make it easier to pass into law.[17] Stockman said that "It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."[17][18][19] Reagan administration officials including Michael Deaver wanted Stockman to be fired in response to his comments, but he was ultimately kept on in exchange for a private apology.[20]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics

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smallmancontrov 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No, no such thing, only a hundred spectacularly regressive tax, trade, and benefit decisions sold on promises of growth that would supposedly benefit everyone and then didn't. Totally different!

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win311fwg 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Since you clearly haven't finished listening to the full joke yet, I'll reveal the punchline: What you describe is what Rogers called "trickle up".

"Trickle-up economics" has never been formally used to refer to a policy either, but at least if you called it that we would understand what you are trying to say. "Trickle-down economics" doesn't even make sense beyond a device used to setup a joke. It is bizarre that you keep going there.

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smallmancontrov 8 hours ago | parent [-]

"Grow the pie" is the phrase used by proponents, because they understand that "trickle down" invites uncomfortable discussions about "are you sure this will actually help me" while the pie analogy cleverly makes this question difficult to talk about. But it's the same argument and everyone can see it.

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9rx 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Proponents of what? Growing the pie isn't going to convince anyone who has a small slice of anything. Maybe you've never seen a pie before, but no matter how much it grows by the angle of your slice remains the same. People don't care about how much absolute wealth they have. If they did they'd all be happy as even the peasants today are richer than the kings of yore. In reality, people are only concerned about having a smaller share of the total wealth than someone else. Those kings of yore, despite having less wealth, are still considered to have been better off as they held the large share of the pie.

	▲	smallmancontrov 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ah, the "let them eat iPhones" argument. No, cool tech does not make up for the ruinous cost of health care, housing, and education vs median wages. Maslow's Hierarchy still exists. A system that fails to deliver food and shelter for a reasonable number of worked hours at a reasonable and available job is still a failure no matter how cool the Big Screen TVs are.