Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke.

[red dog 1]

Amazon, which saved B in taxes under Trump's Big Ugly Bill, has cut 30,000 jobs since last October.

Verizon, which saved B, plans to cut 15,000 jobs this year.

Meta, which saved B, plans to lay off 20% or more of its workforce.

Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke.

— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) 2026-04-19T18:01:08.115430Z

[Biophilic]

1. Some of us saw it for what it was when republicans first started waving it around.

I still don’t understand how some people, other than the wealthy, thought it would work for most of us. I’m so friggin tired of being lied to.

[slightlv]

9. It was the same thing for the word "deregulation"

The minute they started bandying the word about, most of us thinkers knew it meant higher prices and poorer quality on whatever was being "deregulated." Meanwhile the company behind such deal were sure to be high-rolling winners.

[GiqueCee]

14. It's ALWAYS been...

... the moneyed few who call the shots.
The French Revolution had a rather harsh, but very effective, way of dealing with the "Let them eat cake" crowd. Granted, Robespierre got a little carried away, and, indeed, wound up getting a pretty close haircut himself, but the message was sent, delivered, and unmistakeable.
Sadly, those in the business world can never quite grasp this very simple point: Take good care of your people, and they will take good care of you. PRO TIP: Working people are NOT livestock.
It is NOT "Good Business" to screw your customer base. Good business is everyone getting a least a little of what they want, and regardless of what John Boehner thought, "compromise" is not a dirty word.

[walkingman]

2. It always has been and they know it. The issue is the GOP just hates social programs and

basically anything that helps working people because they are basically racists and although the majority of these benefits help white people they think it is minorities and just hate it. The wealthier seem to worship business and "bidnessmen".

It is dumb, it is ignorance, and if they knew history and the suffering that the depression generation had to live through they would change their minds....maybe but the lies about US exceptionalism and the white religious community support the blind support of these nasty bastards.

[slightlv]

10. Yes, the GOP ARE basically racists,

no doubt about that... but... they hate middle class and poor white people, too. Anyone NOT in their social class is to be dismissed as "unnecessary eaters" and anyway to cull the herd is their main goal. And man, are they going full steam ahead these days!

[GiqueCee]

16. The gene for pathological selfishness...

... runs deep and strong in the so-called "Elite". Sadly, they mistakenly equate an arrogant sense of entitlement with accomplishment. Case in point: Trump would be a greeter in a Walmart had his father not been a slumlord who bequeathed him millions, despite his demonstrated ineptitude.

[Farmer-Rick]

24. I think he would have been one of those psychopaths

Who stalk little girls, attack them in the dead of night and leave their small bodies in the ditch. If his father hadn't handed him a lot of money, I think there are a lot of dead bodies surrounding even this filthy-rich life of his. But if he had been born to a middle class family, his psychopathy would have been more obvious.

I think he would have ended up in prison.

[GiqueCee]

26. I agree.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

3. Tech jobs being shed everywhere for AI

[Timewas]

4. Stupid companies

Economics is or should be "trickle up" people on the low end of the economy need money to buy the prodicts, Iif they cannot then the companies don't have sales... Trickle down is exactly opposite of wht is needed. Henry Ford said and did it best when he made sure his employees earned enough to be able to buy his products. Big corporates didexactly the opposite and actually depleted their market.

[MichMan]

22. Don't disagree other than that was not why Henry Ford introduced the $5 a day wage

Last edited Sun Apr 19, 2026, 08:35 PM - Edit history (3)

Absenteeism was high and it was a way to make sure people came to work. The stipulation of that was making sure people were of the right moral turpitude or they would be fired. They did that by visiting people's living quarters periodically

[JoseBalow]

5. When I hear the term "trickle-down"

I think of the phrase, "don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining."

[BattleRow]

7. Beat me to it!

[Scalded Nun]

6. It was never intended to work in practice, only for inducement for gullible americans to sign their futures

away while gifting the country's treasures to the wealthy and powerful. That shyster Reagan sold everyone on that, made easier by the vilification and sabotage of Jimmy Carter's presidency by the right.

Many still believe, and we will never get out from underneath it until this snake oil crusade has has been vanquished.

[slightlv]

12. You would have thought when even

Alan Greenspan stood up in Congress and admitted it doesn't work in full and public view, that more than at least a few of them would have heard and caught on to the scam. But no, even then they were too dense to see it.

[lastlib]

8. All to prop up their precious stock prices.......

"Trickle-down" is really "SHIT-on"!

A cartoon I saw about "trickle-down": A few birds on the top perch shit on a few more birds on the perch below; they in turn shit on more birds on a perch below them, and those in turn shit on a lot of birds on the bottom perch, comPLETEly covering them in bird shit. Quite an apt description of GOPee policy.

[H2O Man]

11. Recommended.

Somewhere, I still have my copy of the YIPPIE! newspaper (Overthrow/Yipster Times) with the cover artwork's opinion of "trickle-down" bing Reagan urinating on the public.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

13. 'Trickle-down' tax cuts make the rich richer but are of no value to overall economy, study finds

There is no Tax-Cut Fairy and trickle-down economics do not work in the real world. Part of the Inflation Reduction Act is the 15% minimum tax on the rich. If the GOP gets control of the House or the Senate, there will be attempts to use the debt ceiling to try to undo the 15% minimum tax and adopt some trickle-down economics

There is no Tax Cut Fairy and tax cuts for the rich only make the rich richer.

Link to tweet

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/23/tax-cuts-rich-trickle-down/

But, just as many economists predicted, slashing individual, corporate and estate tax rates was mostly a windfall for big corporations and wealthy Americans. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did not pay for itself, failed to stimulate long-term growth and did not lead to sustained business investments.

According to one of the most comprehensive studies to date on tax cuts for the rich, this should come as no surprise. A London School of Economics report by David Hope and Julian Limberg examined five decades of tax cuts in 18 wealthy nations and found they consistently benefited the wealthy but had no meaningful effect on unemployment or economic growth........

First, the tax cuts succeeded at putting more money in the pockets of the rich. The share of national income flowing to the top 1 percent increased by about 0.8 percentage points. (For comparison, in the United States the bottom 10 percent of earners capture only 1.8 percent of the country’s income).

But they had no effect on economic growth or employment. Though those quantities fluctuated slightly after the major tax cuts that were studied, the effect was statistically indistinguishable from zero. The “rocket fuel” so often promised by supporters of these tax cuts? It fizzles out time and time again.

“In the last decade, especially with the pioneering work of Thomas Piketty and his co-authors, there has been a growing consensus that tax cuts for the rich lead to higher income inequality,” Hope and Limberg said. Piketty, a French economist, wrote “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” a book on the growth of inequality in rich nations......

Given the historically low tax burdens on the wealthy in the United States, their ability to pay for higher taxes has probably never been better.

[Just Jerome]

15. 45 years of this lunacy

and people are still slow to see it.

[Smokster]

17. Winning !!!

[DenaliDemocrat]

18. Kansas went all in on Trickle Down

It was a disaster. Keynesian economics got us out of the Great Depression and the Great Recession. Why don’t we hammer that point home?

[Fla Dem]

19. It always has been and always will be. Just the term, "Trickle Down"

sends the message there really isn't any serious intention to share wealth with the middle and lower income Americans.

[Initech]

20. You've got to wonder why we still put up with this bullshit.

Fuck the billionaires, fuck all of them!

[Skittles]

30. because people keep voting for repukes?

just a guess

[Skittles]

21. it's the ultra-rich pissing on us

yup

[Dave Bowman]

23. An image worth a thousand words:

[moondust]

25. After 40+ years of "trickle-down"

and vastly increasing inequality, U.S. voters apparently doubled down again and elected the "trickle-down" party to take over all three branches of the federal government. Does not bode well for the vast majority.

[unblock]

27. Tax cuts for businesses are very inefficient boosts for the economy for a simple reason

Businesses base their decisions on whether or not they are profitable. Changes in tax rates affect how much profit they keep, but it does not generally change whether or not a business decision is profitable.

Losing deals still don't get done, and winning deals were going to get done anyway. It just makes them happier to do so, and this translates into political contributions for republicans, which amount to kickbacks. In other words, it's not so much a boon to the economy as it is a boon to a system of political corruption.

Now I'm simplifying a bit, because some marginally losing decisions may become marginally profitable on a risk-adjusted basis and the risk-distorting effects of bankruptcy laws could change some decisions. So it's not a complete waste in terms of stimulating the economy, just very inefficient.

Giving money to poor people working brilliantly because they will spend the extra money in the economy, which by the way, businesses and rich people benefit from. Trickle *up* actually works.

Giving money to businesses doesn't incentivize anything really, they just have more profits to dividend out or do stock buybacks with. So it just gives more money to rich people who often invest or spend overseas. Or on politicians.

[struggle4progress]

28. Trickle-down economics is where some folk drink the wine and then pee on your head

and it trickles down over you

[Morbius]

29. Look at it this way.

If you put money in the hands of a rich man, he's going to put it in his pocket - because he can. If you put money in the hands of a common man, he's going to spend it - because he has to. And when he does spend it, who's going to be there to take it? The rich man! That's how he got rich in the first place.

Those of us who pay attention noticed a long time ago that milk and honey doesn't trickle down the chins of the high and mighty.

[Johnny2X2X]

31. And it just doesn't work for the economy either

The economy does better when regular people have enough money to meet their needs and thus are spending.

That's the 50 year battle and that's why the economy does so much better under Democrats. Put money in working people's pockets and they will move the economy forward. Starve workers in favor of massive tax breaks for the wealthy and the economy falters.

People never heard about it, but joe Biden did more for working people than any president in my lifetime and I was born in the early 70s. Real wages were rising, the bottom 20% were seeing gains not seen since just after WWII. The bottom 50% were seeing bigger gains than the top 10%. The economy was becoming more fair and regular people were getting ahead. All of that despite inflation.

[SocialDemocrat61]

32. It's voodoo economics

[Beausoleil]

33. The joke is so old that the term "trickle-down" was coined by

Will Rogers.

Some attentive folks recognized "supply-side" economics as just a fancy name for trickle-down, back in the 80's.

Still the same scam as back in Hoover's days.