A "Zombie Idea" makes an unwelcome return

No serious economist has ever argued in favour of "Trickle-down economics"

And no government has ever defended its economic policies by suggesting that they would work through a "Trickle-down" mechanism. 

The closest there has ever been to such a thing was a Treasury secretary in the US who resigned from the administration after coming to disagree with its policies and later described those policies as being "trickle down" - but he didn't take that view when he was supporting them and those who continued to support that administration disagreed with the label. The Vice President in that administration, later President himself, had famously described the idea as "Voodoo economics."

So why is the idea even being mentioned? Because some on the left keep claiming, wrongly, that US Republicans and British Conservatives believe in it.

We don't.

Sadly the "Zombie idea" that Republicans or Conservatives believe in "Trickle down," a myth which Dan Hannan has repeatedly debunked as I have quoted here before, keeps rearing its' ugly head, usually from people who really ought to know better.

Sometimes, as when the term is applied to the present UK Conservative government, this attribution is nothing short of ridiculous. 

I don't believe that there is any such thing as "Trickle-down economics" but if there were, a government whose most important economic policy is to spend £60 billion pounds on cutting the energy bill of every household in the country, and which is also paying an additional £1,200 directly into the bank accounts of the most vulnerable households to help with the cost of living, certainly would not be following it.

American economist Thomas Sowell has consistently argued that trickle-down economics has never been advocated by any economist, writing in his 2012 book "Trickle Down" Theory and "Tax Cuts for the Rich":

"Let's do something completely unexpected: Let's stop and think. 

"Why would anyone advocate that we 'give' something to A in hopes that it would trickle down to B? Why in the world would any sane person not give it to B and cut out the middleman? But all this is moot, because there was no trickle-down theory about giving something to anybody in the first place.

"The 'trickle-down' theory cannot be found in even the most voluminous scholarly studies of economic theories - including J. A. Schumpeter's monumental History of Economic Analysis, more than a thousand pages long and printed in very small type."

Sowell strongly opposes the characterization of supply siders as "trickle down," pointing out that supply-side economics has never claimed to work in a "trickle-down" fashion. Rather, the economic theory of reducing marginal tax rates works in precisely the opposite direction: 

"Workers are always paid first and then profits flow upward later – if at all," he wrote.

Quite

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