Date: 2024-07-17 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00026140
US POLITICS
RIGHT WING THINKING ... THOMAS SOWELL
Paper: “Trickle Down” Theory and “Tax Cuts for the Rich”
RIGHT WING THINKING ... THOMAS SOWELL
Paper: “Trickle Down” Theory and “Tax Cuts for the Rich”
Original article: HooverInst-Sowell-TrickleDown-26140.pdf
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
I have archived this Paper from the Hoover Institution Press on the 'Trickle Down Theory' and 'Tax Cuts for the Rich' because I am in serious disagreement with almost everything in the paper.
For me, Thomas Sowell has little credibility, along with most of the others who write material that conforms with the Hoover Institution's agenda.
I often describe myself as a 'conservative' ... and somewhat to the 'left' of Bernie Sanders. This may sound somewhat silly, but really it is not. What is 'silly' is most of the policy ideas coming from the 'right' of the American political spectrum.
The idea of 'Trickle Down' was very convenient when it was popularized by the 'right leaning' Reagan administration in the 1990s and has been gamed ever since in favor of rich and powerful people at the 'top' ... at the top in business, at the top in banking and finance, and at the top in 'right wing' politics. The process of concentating wealth at the 'top' has never been stronger than under the 'Right Wing' process of 'Trickle Down' and the nonsense of tax cuts for the rich.
I have called the process a process of 'Financialization' where economic activity has a singular focus on generating financial profit and rewarding investors as well as the enablers in top management and politics.
I see three periods of huge prosperity for those at the top ... the golden ages of modern times:
- The period of 1896 - 1914 ... a period of rapid industrialization and a time of great prosperity, growth and development for several nations across the world.
- The Roaring Twenties was a decade of economic growth and widespread prosperity, driven by recovery from wartime devastation and deferred spending, a boom in construction, and the rapid growth of consumer goods; and
- Post WWII when the world economy was recovering from the war ... it lasted until the 1960s, and sputtered on until the oil shock of 1973
In my view, the top economists around the world have completely failed to understand the critical dynamic that has been going on since the 1980s ... actually many dynamics rather than a single dynamic which have combined to deliver a concentration of wealth for a few with financial power at the expense of everyone else.
I studied economics at Cambridge around 1960 ... more than 60 years ago. Keynes had already died, but people like Joan Robinson were still active in the economics department. I remember discussion about an economic future where working people would be prosperous and only working 30 hours a week because most everything needed by society could be produced with this quite low amount of economic activity. What went wrong? Now ... decades later, most working people need to work 80 hours to make ends meet!
One of the terrible characteristics of 'financialization' is that it does not enable progress and productivity ... or productivity and progreess ... but merely moves wealth away from ordinary working people to those with power and a financial stranglehold ... in other words, it is zero sum rather than delivering meaningful value-add!
Think tanks like the Hoover Institution have promoted the Reagan agenda ... and Reagan like agendas ... as long as I can remember. In the process they have enabled poverty in rich economies ... an idea that benefits the rich and powerful, but at huge cost to the majority of people. More than anything else, this economic malaise is ripping at the core of American society and enabling all sorts of antisocial autocratric leaders around the world ... a very dangerous progression that will explode maybe sooner than anyone expects!
Peter Burgess
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