Does "Trickle down economics" work?

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True. The best system would be most likely be anarcho-primitive (far fewer and genetically fitter people alive, better for Mother Earth) with barter systems in lieu of money - like we had in the dark ages.

As much as I would hate that knowing I myself could no survive, it may in fact be better for the planet that way. Harsh but true.

As far as what's the 'best' system, I think David Pakman makes a good argument for Social Democracy but again that's also not socialism, rather that's telling capitalism to serve the people rather than giving the factors of production to the government, and it rhymes well with Eric Weinstein's suggestion that markets are good at telling us the most efficient 'how' to do things but that they're morally incapable of telling us 'what' we should do, and in the US we make the mistake of buying the idea hook, line, and sinker that markets should tell us not only what we should do but which human lives are valuable, which is an absurd and nihilistic inversion of value.

I swear this thread was almost designed to trigger me. Walrus has written the only informed post in the entire thing.

Whether tax cuts spur growth or "pay for themselves" is entirely dependent on how high the taxes are to begin with and the structure of the economy.

Real tax revenue was 12% higher at the end of Reagan's presidency post large tax cuts than at the beginning.
Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/reagan-cut ... 1501800678 (this may be paywalled sorry if it is)

This is simple, the economy grew rapidly under Reagan and thus despite lower taxes the government collected more tax revenue. Economic growth plus higher tax revenue is literally all around a win.

Now, the correlation of rapid economic growth post-tax cuts does not imply that the that the tax cuts cause that growth. However, most economic theory suggests that tax-cuts do tend to increase economic growth.

Also the uber-wealthy only stash a small percentage of their wealth. They invest the rest of it so that it never runs out.

How about Libertarian Municipalism?


https://youtu.be/8D3ic7jnvnU

Tax mitigation by the rich has turned into an art form and is undoubtedly very effective.
Tax cuts would benefit them to some degree, but they are pretty well covered already.

For example:
Google has been criticised for paying no tax at all in some countries.
If the tax rate was cut there, this company would gain no benefit at all unless it encouraged them to alter the tax strategy in other countries.

But ultimately many do still seem to gain considerably as indicated by the significant loss in tax revenue with the introduced tax cuts in the USA, if the figures presented by "Planet America" can be believed.

Fret not.
This is a rather simple subject for me.
I will have it sorted out in next to no time once I put my mind to it.

Thank you for your observation.

If being informed was a requirement to post on WP, there’d be very few posts overall.

Seriously dude.
How do you know I am not trained in psychology?

Precisely my thought.
I was under the impression that forums such as these were designed for personal and informational growth.

I made it quite clear in my very first post that I was not "au fait" with the subject matter.
It was/is my intention to throw around ideas to stimulate the enlightenment nerve.

Oh no, I wasn't being serious at all.

So maybe only if libertarian municipalism would kill far more people and take the world much farther back than what I said above.

I think the consensus is very strong that the Thatcher/Reagan tax cuts were A Good Idea. Contrastingly, it seems to be pretty widely accepted that George W. Bush's tax cuts were essentially a handout for the rich that ballooned the US deficit and didn't have nearly enough of a positive effect to make up for the loss of revenue. Similarly, Scott Walker's cuts in Wisconsin might have succeeded if judged solely from a small-state ideological perspective and not one concerned with adequately funding public services.

I cautiously think the Osborne/Hammond cuts we've seen in the UK in recent years have worked. Certainly the initial evidence suggests that revenues have risen. But it's also possible that they would have risen even more if the rates had been higher. I'm not sure how well they have been analysed.

I think the Trump cuts are pretty similar structurally to the Bush cuts. The combination of great monetary management policy by the Fed and effective deregulation means that the American economy is doing very well at the moment, so it could prove difficult to disentangle the effects. But given that America is already a low-tax environment, it seems to me that dropping taxes further is unlikely to raise revenues. If there is a lack of demand in the economy then cut tariffs, or inject a stimulus.



Is it even possible to stash wealth? Even if you keep a million dollars under your mattress, you're still "investing" in dollars. It's not nearly as useful an investment as even putting it in a bank (where it can fund loans) but it's not as dead as it might seem.

I do think this line of argument slightly misrepresents the "rich people hoarding wealth" argument though. It's more of a rejection of the idea of rich people getting even richer. I think probably the most generous way I can put it - and I'm not sure I've ever heard someone put it in these terms - is that there's an accusation that investment is a form of rent seeking, in the economic sense. While investment may sometimes create new wealth, the investor leverages their existing position to gain a disproportionate share of that wealth for minimal effort. It might not, strictly speaking, be classical rent seeking, but it's a soft form of it.

Now I certainly don't buy that argument in the general sense, but there are cases where it happens and where you could argue that some sort of intervention might be beneficial to make the market work better for everyone.

I've seen many people recently saying that Trump's tax cuts brought in more revenue. When employers have more money they can pay higher wages for more qualified people, and they can afford to give raises. The middle class making more money = more revenue. How so? Because the majority of revenue comes from the middle class. If you jack taxes up very high like democrats love to do, all people suffer. Companies move out of country to avoid high taxes, less companies = less jobs to employ people. For the companies that don't move out of country they have less profit, which = less money to spend on employees, sorry, no raise this year, in fact we may need to cut your hours and only employ part timers. Raising minimum wages generally hurts more than it helps, putting smaller self owned businesses out of business and allowing corporations to dominate. The person I watched explaining this was Dan Bongino, or something like that, he brought up data showing that both Bush tax cuts and Trump tax cuts boosted federal revenue. I feel, and hear, most democrat policies increase taxes on all people and offer sh***y expensive systems for your money. As far as trickle down, of course it works, if you can prevent democrats from wasteful spending and taxing to death to future enrichen politicians by passing bills that increase stock prices of companies which their relatives own stocks in. Or get payed off to pass a bill that will benifit a corporation so when you get out of office you get to go work for them making a lot more money. Both corrupt republicans and democrats do this. The president everyone hear loves to bash cut taxes, as a result wages are going up for workers, bigger bonuses, more tax revenue. Back to trickle down, everyone can't own a buisness, who would your workers be? To have employers you need employees and vice versa. If you don't have trickle down economics you generally end up with more of a socialist type system which tends to encourage poor results. Why be a doctor and go to school for 8 years if you can't make much money? Bernie Sanders would tell you all people should get paid the same amount no matter what job they have. That is his solution to the gender wage gap. The gender wage gap is real but people are dishonest about why it exists and what it actually means. While their are many factors, two of the most important ones are women on average don't work as many hours as men. The averages are something like 36 hours a week for women and 48 hours a week for men. Also men seem to choose higher paying jobs on average while women tend to choose lower paying jobs on average. When they say wage gap, when Sanders says wage gap, he is saying the bank manager (man) makes way more than the secretary (woman)(just as an example, all women don't get low paying jobs and all men don't get high paying jobs, it's an average and is the reason that when comparing men income to women income, men seem to make a lot more money. What it doesn't mean is that a woman gets paid less money to do the same job with the same hours. In fact, less women choose coding jobs, it's their choice, not forced. Google decided to study the subject because they have a illness called libitard. They look into their company to see why they employ more women than men...must be discrimination says the libitard. So they looked at wages, because they assume, with so much discrimination that they probably pay women less money for the same job and same hours. When they got the results they had to give men raises because what they found is they pay men less than women for the same job and hours. So naturally feminists within the company got upset, men are dogs, they should be on leashes, they should be discriminated on, we don't desire equalty, we desire dominance. All women aren't feminists, all feminist aren't radicalized, so don't freak out! The most insane people within both genders seem to make the most noise, that's why you hear so much insanity from activists posing as journalists, and yes, most of them are on the left. They don't need reason and facts, morals Trump everything, even science and factual information. Their equation is, if there isn't absolutely equal outcome between genders and race within all aspects of society, there is no other possibility for that unequal outcome other than discrimination. There are for true inclusion, unless you have conservative viewpoints , then it doesn't even matter if you are a black transgender, be prepared to hear from the most intolerant people call you all kinds of racist names and spew hate towards you, the absolute biggest hypocritical hateful people on this planet outside of actual supremacists which actually make up a very tiny fraction of people. These hateful people don't see it that way though, anyone with conservative viewpoints is a white supremacist, yes, even if you are a black transgender. All people on the left aren't these crazy people, but their sure are a lot of them, they are the biggest hate group on this planet for sure.

Anyway, trickle down economics does work, in the right system, not in the one the us currently has which is more in tune with corporate socialism.