Split Thread Trickle-down economics

the term trickle-down was a deliberate joke on supply-side economics: as Bush sr. said: it's Vodoo economics.
 
There is an interesting criticism of economics and trickle down economics and theoretical economists from the Guardian newspaper in the UK. Personally, I think that currency arrangements and trade economics and the principles of international finance are beyond their ability. They don't think of the practical points of cutting social security and they only seem to be interested in house prices and speculation in currency and bitcoin:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/criticism-economics-isnt-dangerous/

4. Economists are not right-wing as commonly portrayed

On politics, it is correct that economists aren’t all the free-marketeers they are so often portrayed as by the media. At the same time, one reason for this perception may be that economic models incorporate various assumptions that tend to lead to unequal and unfair outcomes. For example, mainstream economists have traditionally aimed to optimise economic growth and paid less attention to distribution, in part because their models make what amount to symmetry assumptions which don’t fit easily with things like extreme inequality. Another concern is that many influential economists have been captured by the financial industry through things like lucrative consulting contracts, one cause of ‘regulatory capture’. For instance, one study found that whenever none of a paper’s authors worked in a business school, it was ‘significantly less likely to be positive on the level of executive compensations and significantly more likely to be negative.’
 
Last edited:
There is an interesting criticism of economics and trickle down economics and theoretical economists from the Guardian newspaper in the UK. Personally, I think that currency arrangements and trade economics and the principles of international finance are beyond their ability. They don't think of the practical points of cutting social security and they only seem to be interested in house prices and speculation in currency and bitcoin:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/criticism-economics-isnt-dangerous/

All, or nearly all, mainstream economists follow/endorse some flavor of free market economics. The disconnect is that this makes them “right wing”. It doesn’t. Rather, what’s going on is that right wing politics favors a brand of economics that is, at best, on the fringes of economic though.

Most economists recognise that completely unfetter markets have limitations and in some cases simply can’t work at all. In practice most debates are over how much outside intervention is required to keep markets operating efficiently and when you need to step away from them and let Government provide the service in question. This contrasts with Right Wing thinking because there is a knee jerk reaction that any such action is bad. Even the most conservative economists, when speaking in their own field, advocate at least some level of government involvement which tends to put them at odds with right wing politicians who insist any involvement is bad.
 
They had some economic analyst on the TV today saying that there never had been any austerity and that tax cuts for the rich are a good thing because they bring in more revenue! I think he must be out of touch with reality and the real world. There was a Labour peer in the House of Lords, I think called Lord Livermore, who explained the suffering austerity has caused and is causing. Economics, like trickle down economics, needs to be based on a scientific rock, not on not profound enough fantasy economics.
 
Theoretical economics like trickle down economics seems to be based on opinions rather than scientific rock or reality. Economic conditions and lunatic currency arrangements without commodity security can cause wars. Something needs to be done.
 
I just think things like trickle down economics and the principles of international finance and trade economics and currency arrangements are beyond the ability of theoretical economics and economists and politicians and bankers. It's not the same in other professions like engineering or medicine or architecture or space research or computer science. I don't know if it's because the best brains never make a profound study of the subject. There is a bit about this at this website:

www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/economists-still-think-economics-is-the-best/390063/

In the intervening decade, a massive economic crisis rocked the global economy, and most economists never saw it coming. Nevertheless, little has changed: A new paper from the same publication reveals how economists continue to believe that their science is superior to all other social sciences, such as political science, sociology, anthropology, etc. While there may be budding intentions to appeal to other disciplines in order to enrich their theories (especially psychology and neuroscience), the reality is that economists almost exclusively study—and cite—each other.
 
Last edited:
Milton Friedman was mainly responsible for all this trickle down economics and monetarism which is now failing in France. My theory is that he kept theoretical economics very simple for people like the public and House of Commons so that it would not be beyond their ability. The trouble was it was not academically satisfactory:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/nov/16/post650

Given his status as a long-standing hate figure, the assumption by many of the left is that his agenda was cemented into place during the Reagan and Thatcher administrations in the early 1980s, especially Friedman's well-known view that inflation is solely influenced by changes in the money supply. But very few of Friedman's most cherished proposals were ever put in to practice. Of those that were - such as monetarism - almost all turned into failure.
 
Last edited:
the term trickle-down was a deliberate joke on supply-side economics: as Bush sr. said: it's Vodoo economics.
There is no reason to involve heathen religions!
Trickle-down economics is the secularized version of pie in the sky when you die!
Fortunately, this is an insight that seems to be dawning on most people nowadays.
 

Back
Top Bottom