Duffman

... Except for all the wealth that gets ferried off-shore to avoid taxes or hoarded in safe-haven investments. Even the money that gets invested in the stock market only stands to really benefit the shareholders (55% of Americans), and that's only until a crash leaves your average investor holding the bag while the market movers with inside info get out at the top and buy back in at the bottom. Funding an IPO or SPAC generates tech and jobs, but that's a small part of the market.


If anything, giving money to poor people is a lot more likely to 'trickle up' because they're more likely to actually spend it on goods and services, driving the financial engine. I think people should be rewarded for their financial prowess and hard work, and people who want free rides should be punished, but the 'trickle down' theory is just a sales pitch that the rich use to convince suckers that they need lower taxes, which ironically go to pay for the services that those very poor people are most likely to need.


Trickle down might've been useful in 1980, when the top 1% were getting taxes at 70%, but nowadays their tax bracket isn't that much higher than the middle class. The way our financial institution works, it's a lot easier to go from $1M to $10M than from $10k to $100k. From the other side, trickle down makes it harder for new businesses to emerge because the bottom 90% of tax payers are shouldering more of the tax burden, which cuts directly into their necessities, preventing them from ever generating enough capital to get off the ground. Bezos can risk $1M and not care, I can't, and considering we're at record unemployment with a stock market at ATHs, the rich are being rewarded plenty, right now. They've beat the caricature of welfare mamas to death, but for some reason, it keeps working. There's a balance and it's very out-of-whack.