Trickle down is a failure

[Tom Joad]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert...usaolp00000592

Of course, Republicans and apologists for Wall Street dispute that assumption. They argue that the economy is not a so-called "zero sum game" -- that the best way to improve the standard of living or ordinary Americans is to grow the economy. And they say that the best way to do that is to allow the wealthy to control more and more of the nation's wealth, since they invest that wealth in new productive enterprises that create more and more new jobs.

That premise, of course, is the essence of "trickle-down economics." The problem is that we know empirically that "trickle-down economics" doesn't work. Economic growth does not necessarily increase the incomes of ordinary Americans.

In fact, over the last 35 years we've had lots of economic growth. Over that period per capita income has increased by a whopping 77% and made America wealthier per capita that any society in the history of the world. That should mean the average American is 77% better off today then he or she was three and a half decades ago. Problem is, we aren't. Instead, the real buying power of the wages of ordinary Americans has barely increased at all. Instead, all of that growth had been siphoned off to the top one percent -- and most to the top .01%. That is not a theory. It is a documented fact.

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