If trickledown has nothing to do with economics, why do economists talk about it ?
But what has not been discussed here is what it does. Instead, it seems to have been a pile on because I dared to suggest what a PP advocated for was trickle down.
My take on it is about corporate tax. The classic Reaganomics version, that reform seem to have adopted in a handwaving way, (without explaining how it works). The concept is simple enough. Let the rich get richer (companies mainly, but also individuals), by reducing corporate tax and regulations, and that will trickle down to the not rich. Because the rich will be spending more money.
But it does not work, because they do not spend the money. It takes money out of circulation. And the reduction in regs make it worse, because corporation spend less on meeting regs, taking more money out.
I think of it in terms of loaves of bread. Near everyone buys bread. It's a constant. But people do not buy more bread if they are rich. and the poor, they might struggle to buy any. So bread sales go down. And when that happens, production costs go up and the price goes up.
Now take that and put it into corporate tax, and how a corporation can reduce it's tax in a high tax environment. It spends money on other things. If the corporation tax is progressive, it can avoid higher tax bands by investment. R&D, people, machinery and equipment. And l that money is going into the system.
The high corporate taxation policy is effectively pushing it to be spent, rather than squirreled away, or going into bumper dividends.
Remove this push to reduce exposure to taxation, and the company becomes purely bigger profit driven. Combine that with less regs, and we get redundancies, cost cutting, lack of re-investment. Instead, the money vanishes into the ether of offshore bank accounts, and less bread is being bought. And a bigger welfare bill most likely.
A very rough overview of why trickledown does not work long term. I think it is enough of an overview to explain why the people advocating for it can't find any nation doing it.
And this is also why I ask people advocating for it to explain how it delivers what Reform promises it will. And nobody has. Just handwaving.