Sunday 27 December 2020

What About

Trickle up economics?

Clearly, after 50 years of data accumulation, economic studies show that trickle down economics do not work. Of course there is solid logic behind the idea - corporations make more money, they create more jobs - money trickles down, everyone wins. Unfortunately that model does not take into account greed. When corporations make more money, that money trickles up to shareholders first in the form of dividends. Whatever is left then goes to create more jobs - usually low paying jobs that require further corporate subsidy by the state for these underpaid workers in the form of welfare and other social assistance. There is a reason why Wal-Mart is one of the biggest beneficiaries of welfare. This is why the rich just keep getting richer - they bleed the system from both ends.

If it was so easy to bamboozle everyone with the hypothesis of trickle down economics, it should be just as easy to convince everyone of the benefits of trickle up economics. Pay a living wage to all your workers and they have more money to spend on the products and services you produce and that they need. Everyone wins in this symbiotic, sustainable model.

Trickle down economics have a better chance of working if corporations were run to benefit the corporation first, the shareholders second. Unfortunately that is not what happens in real life. Decisions are made to maximize the CEO’s salary bonuses and those bonuses are always tied to shareholder return on investment. This is why we continue to see corporations make short term decisions that maximize profits but actually hurt the integrity of the corporation over the long term. Shareholders and CEOs are not in all it for the long term. Most are just in it long enough to maximize their income until they can find a more lucrative opportunity.

“The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.” - Warren Buffett (b. 1930)

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