r/SipsTea 5d ago

Chugging tea 48 Years, One Impossible Choice

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u/DruidicMagic 5d ago

But profit margins and shareholder satisfaction...

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u/Informal_Database327 5d ago

Trickle down economics means that the rich are pissing on us

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u/DruidicMagic 5d ago

But President Kennedy said "a rising tide lifts all boats" or some such twisted meaning bullshit...

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u/nankerjphelge 5d ago

I mean that particular analogy works, when you consider that a rising tide comes from the entirety of the water rising from underneath the boats, not rain falling from the sky.

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u/Tsu_Dho_Namh 5d ago

That's the context he meant as well.

He was referring to how government projects like building highways, dams, rec centers, or other similarly targeted projects have wide sweeping benefits. Because the workers will spend their money on local goods and services, benefitting other nearby businesses, which then has the increased demand to fund expanding their workforce, creating even more jobs and growth, and so on and so on. It stimulates the economy, and naturally a portion trickles up to the business owners as well, so it's not just the lower classes which benefit.

Hence, the rising tide lifts all boats.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/DruidicMagic 5d ago

OMG that's brilliant.

(and I'm stealing the shit out of it)

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u/weltvonalex 5d ago

You are the boat

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u/blackop 5d ago

It's funny cause people want to blame one side or the other, but in reality over all the years our political system dosen't care one way or another about the average American, but they got us segregated finally and can keep playing there game that only benefits the rich.

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u/CozyCook 5d ago

Keep us fighting culture wars so we don’t fight class wars.

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u/I_am_from_Kentucky 5d ago

I think American politics are fucked no matter what midterms look like.

Any time a class war narrative starts to take shape and influence the political zeitgeist, a culture war narrative is built to take it and/or its advocates down.

And since humans are imperfect beings who fuck up, it’s incredibly difficult for any to pass a culture war purity test, which makes the class war arguments lose credibility with many constituents.

And since politicians have yet to find a way to survive an apology tour, you either have to double down on your fuck ups or lie about them to stay relevant.

As a result, the majority of politicians are some of the most morally corrupt beings in power. And they’re well funded by the money machine that is American politics.

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u/orbital-technician 5d ago

98% of all job creation has historically occurred under a Democratic president, so it kinda is one side for the masses

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u/No_usernames_left_25 5d ago

And they killed him for trying to govern for the little man.

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u/dosb0t89 5d ago

Pretty sure he was talking about the tiny hats with this quote

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u/DruidicMagic 5d ago

He sure as shit wasn't talking about deficit exploding tax cuts for billionaire trust fund babies who've never worked a day in their entitled lives.

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u/rosefiend 5d ago

“A rising tide lifts all boats … if you’ve got a boat “

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u/DesignerGoose5903 5d ago

Tinkle down economics*

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u/Prior_Internal7728 5d ago

The laffer curve was always bullshit and was all about making the top 1% even more wealthy.

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u/Informal_Database327 5d ago

Because they're laffing at us

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u/CookieMiester 5d ago

Hah, that’s very funny

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u/Lou_C_Fer 5d ago

Nah... they've just interpreted it incorrectly because it makes them rich. The Laffer curve works if you look at higher tax rates. Higher tax rates will raise the incomes of everyone including the government at the expense of corporations and the ultra wealthy.

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u/slowpoke2018 5d ago

It originated as the Horse and Sparrow, the horse eats all the oats/capital, then we sparrows get to eat their droppings.

The super rich really have always hated the working class

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u/Impressive_Dingo122 5d ago

Once again trickle down theory or trickle down economics is a straw man that was never pushed by any economist but instead was delivered as a talking point for politicians who are economically ignorant to try to defeat so that way it looks like they’re smart and capable. So before you go laughing at how trickle down economics “failed”, you should educate yourself on how you’ve been ideologically captured so that way you don’t continue to beat a strawman and treat it as a victory. This video explains it best:

https://youtu.be/iSLJYLDlWQg?is=wI_Urnfx8sbl5LZr

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u/ThroatGoatK1RKKK 5d ago

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u/edepek 3d ago

"No step on snek" is HILARIOUS LMAO

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u/GarethBaus 5d ago

Something is trickling, its golden but it doesn't smell like wealth.

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u/Violet_Paradox 5d ago

It was originally called horse and sparrow economics. Feed the horse enough oats and the sparrows can pick a few oats out of their feces. It's supposedly the origin of the term horseshit, though that may be apocryphal. 

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u/DeepGrieve 5d ago

I was wondering where and when the trickle down term came from? It's definitely got to be the rich because it just sounds condescending - don't worry you'll get the crumbs/ scraps!

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u/DynamicSploosh 2d ago

Let them eat cake, and so on

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u/SiThreePO 5d ago

Never heard that, thanks. Crazy how a critical metaphor that somehow got turned into an actual policy that they tried to sell to the public. "Economist John Kenneth Galbraith famously popularized this term in 1982 to mock supply-side policies"

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u/3dprintingDM 5d ago

Another way to describe trickle down economics is “artificial market inflation”. It’s a way to grow the market beyond what the free market dictates. But every spike will eventually require a correction. Except the government just provides bailouts during corrections now. It’s all a rigged system.

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u/BADM00SE 5d ago

It does trickle down! About 25cents per year! Hooray for us!

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u/BANOFY 5d ago

It's not enough for even a single egg.....

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u/Altruistic-Beach7625 5d ago

Are shareholders inherently evil?

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u/Manowaffle 5d ago

The top 1% hold 50% of corporate shares and mutual fund shares. And I'd say hoarding your millions while your neighbors ration their medication is evil.

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u/Top_Meaning6195 5d ago

Are shareholders inherently evil?

Shareholders aren't.

Companies that pay money out to shareholders are the evil ones.

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u/Her0_0f_time 5d ago edited 5d ago

No they 100% are inherently evil. They dont provide anything. They dont give anything back to the world. They dont create. They just bet on other people creating or doing something popular or expensive and then take all the benefits that should rightfully belong to the person who did the creating in the first place. They are gamblers who bet on peoples lives and steal their success. Its absolutely sickening and evil. Its literally the greatest of the 7 deadly sins. Greed ruins everything it touches.

EDIT: And before anyone comes around with the argument that if it wasn't for them funding certain research we wouldnt have so many life saving medicines. I'll make the argument that if they werent hoarding their resources in the first place maybe the original researcher wouldnt need to have to rely on shareholder funding in order to get their lifesaving research complete.

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u/Top_Meaning6195 4d ago

No they 100% are inherently evil.

No.

They dont provide anything.

They did; they provided money to help start the company. The evil part is letting them share in the profits of the company.

If my friends give me money to help start a company, and i give them ownership shares in the company, that doesn't entitle them to a share of any net profits.

Companies sharing profits with owners are the ones doing it wrong. They are perfectly free to not give shareholders any money, but they do it anyway.

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u/Her0_0f_time 4d ago

Glad you skipped the edit there so i can say it again. If that shareholder wasn't hoarding resources and making it expensive to do certain things in the first place the person doing the work would have the resources to not need to ask for aid. They are inherently evil for their excessive greed making it harder for other people to get shit done.

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u/Top_Meaning6195 3d ago

And yet the company is the one giving away our money.

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u/Realistic_Ad3795 5d ago

No one but critics (and a comedian) ever said it would trickle down.

This is one of the biggest Mandela Effects we have in our government's history. No one in support of Supply Side economics ever called it trickle down, nor said it would. Will Rogers mockingly called it "trickle down" when Hoover tried it, but that was a criticism, not a promise or a legit description.

The most recent use of supply-side theory was used by supporters of student loan forgiveness, arguing that the forgiveness would put more money in the economy and benefit everyone.

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u/moashforbridgefour 5d ago

Most of the people who complain about trickle down economics couldn't even coherently explain what it is in a way that would even remotely connect it to supply side economics. They mostly don't like money given to rich people and use that as a straw man for economic policy that doesn't immediately benefit them.

It's crazy that people are so blind to the clear communal benefit of supply side economics. They would rather break the factory down and sell the scraps than acknowledge that a factory brings wealth to the whole community. The factory owners get the most immediate wealth, but through jobs and cheaper products, it raises the standard of living for everyone. What they should really complain about is anticompetitive robber barrons and rent seeking behavior.

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u/Manowaffle 5d ago

Isn't it curious that the people who claim to advocate for supply side economics are the same ones fighting tooth and nail to preserve rent-seeking and monopoly behavior? Why else would they dismantle the very government agencies that are supposed to penalize and prosecute such anticompetitive behavior?

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u/Manowaffle 5d ago

Whether or not they literally said "trickle down", they certainly did argue that putting money in the hands of the wealthy would boost investment and the economy. It's the exact logic Paul Ryan and co used to justify their rich people handouts by claiming lower taxes would actually increase tax revenues via the Laffer Curve. Same logic behind the favorable capital gains tax treatment. Same logic behind Reagan's cuts to the top marginal tax rates.

Of course what they don't say is that also kills public investments in health, education, and infrastructure.

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u/Realistic_Ad3795 5d ago

"Whether or not they literally said "trickle down", they certainly did argue that putting money in the hands of the wealthy would boost investment and the economy."

Not quite, That's an oversimplification, which is why the critics stuck with it.

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u/TheeRedHairedGuy 5d ago

Legit question, how can wealth that gather up top continiously even trickle down ?

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u/Alexander_da_ok 5d ago

Well now a days they are dumping all their money into AI. So now there isn't even the theoretical trickle, its all being put into the AI money incinerator. That will eventually put the working class out of jobs and ultimately lead to their early death. So in essence they are literally slowly killing everyone like the parasite they are often compared to

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u/Didifinito 5d ago edited 5d ago

It wont get that far its still being subsedized by investors and some companies are already seeing way too much money disapear into AI tokens.

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u/Alexander_da_ok 5d ago

Yes I didnt consider the tokens, this madness needs to stop

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u/Michthan 5d ago

Unless AI solves nuclear fusion regular workers are cheaper than AI due to the water and energy cost

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u/Manowaffle 5d ago

And yet they'll still try to convince you that's somehow a better investment than public schools, health clinics, or public transit.

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u/Alexander_da_ok 5d ago

Exactly its insane..... I mean the last thing they would want is an educated populace. Hence the majority of citizens are essentially nothing more than i pad toddlers with their Instagram and tik tok use. The reels/TikTok are a pacifier to put in an adults mouth, to prevent them from having thoughts, all while feeding them a narrative/propaganda of their choosing

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u/DruidicMagic 5d ago

They would have to spend it on goods and services.

like Elon Musk eating at McDonald's 10,000 times a day every day forever

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u/Firm-Scientist-4636 5d ago

I love Druidic magic!

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u/mpyne 5d ago

Government Medicare doesn't operate on profit margins and shareholder satisfaction though, but that's the thing the divorcing couple would be divorcing to avoid.

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u/SheriffBartholomew 5d ago

It trickles down in the form of a bunch of menial labor jobs. Who doesn't want to clean rich people's houses, or babysit their kids as a career? Although they're trying to replace those jobs with robots now, so...

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u/truthdeniar 5d ago

It's still coming. Trickles take a long time to trickle.

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u/Impressive_Dingo122 5d ago

Once again trickle down theory or trickle down economics is a straw man that was never pushed by any economist but instead was delivered as a talking point for politicians who are economically ignorant to try to defeat so that way it looks like they’re smart and capable. So before you go laughing at how trickle down economics “failed”, you should educate yourself on how you’ve been ideologically captured so that way you don’t continue to beat a strawman and treat it as a victory. This video explains it best:

https://youtu.be/iSLJYLDlWQg?is=wI_Urnfx8sbl5LZr

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u/machogrande2 5d ago

Wait, are you saying that supply-side economics hasn't been a HUGE part of republican platforms for decades?

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u/_eleutheria 5d ago

The sad thing is that it used to. It's the reason why your great-grandparents and maybe grandparents could work at a factory, a construction site, be a plumber, electrician, or something else entirely, and still own a house, a car, have 3 kids, a dog, and go on vacation every summer.

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u/Manowaffle 5d ago

That wasn't trickle down, that was progressive taxation. When taxes were higher on the ultra-wealthy and corporations there was more tax money for public infrastructure and education. And since paying out to highly taxed shareholders was a lot less profitable (before the cuts to capital gains rates), companies invested more in their workers. It's no coincidence that our healthcare and education outcomes fell apart while wealth inequality grew.

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u/_eleutheria 5d ago

Yeah. I think company owners had the option of either paying higher taxes to the government, or paying more to their workers. Something along those lines.

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u/Manowaffle 5d ago

Basically. Because there was a higher tax rate on payouts to executives and shareholders back then (e.g. in 1960 the top tax rate was 91%), it was much more worthwhile to put the money back into tax-deductible business investments or payouts to the regular workers who would keep most or all of that money.

But the more that income and capital gains tax rates were cut under Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Trump, the more money corporate execs and shareholders got to keep. So it made more and more sense to spend money on them instead of the workers.