It's a game of catch-up in which you can never catch up. That's why it's stupid to keep thinking that we can get ahead by taxing the rich. If you tax them more for what they make they will charge you more for what you purchase. We are the ones that wind up paying THEIR taxes. And then we turn around and strike for a raise. Out of work for 6 months and get a dollar raise. You can't make up for the lost wages in a lifetime. And, if you get a raise, the boss wants a raise. Where does the money come from? Raise the price of the whatever it is that we are selling. Who pays? We do! You can never catch up.

Nope. It's the natural result of the top-end of a debt cycle (typically 50-70 years). Fact 1: economic growth comes from only two sources: increases in labor and increases in capital. Fact 2: as an economy grows, more and more of the growth will be due to capital, and less and less due to labor. (We can double the number of machines and tools much faster than we can double the number of laborers.) Fact 3: as the proportion of capital grows, the owners of capital rightly and fairly demand a corresponding increase in their share of the economy. Fact 4: simply redistributing INCOME does nothing to redress the imbalance, but merely slows or stalls the rate of economic growth, hurting everybody - but the owners of capital still profit and see their share of the eonomy grow while Labor languishes and sees its share of the economy shrink. Fact 5: all such cycles end up in an asset bubble. Fact 6: though labor's share of the economy shrinks year to year, it is still on average better off than it was before (real wages may not have improved since 1975, but no one had cell phones, wave runners, computers, the internet, or access to an MRI back then either - also coach air travel was far more expensive if a lot more comfortable) ... until the final years of the cycle with its asset bubble. But redistributing INCOMES slows growth, and thus leaves labor worse off than they would have been with unimpeded growth and no income redistribution. Fact 7: Nationalized/communized ownership of capital does not solve the problem due to the gross inefficiencies and blindness of central economic planning which inevitably result in a market failure. Fact 8: The only way to keep individual shares of the economy growing for at least the vast majority is for everyone to become an owner of their personal or family business, or partners in larger concerns. Employee stock-plans are also good for redressing this, but not without other problems. The problem with the goal of universal personal proprietorship (or at least personal ownership) is that "while the only people who make money at roulette are the keepers of roulette tables, a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown." In other words, until the masses are smarter, wiser, and more industrious - until they are no longer content to barter their hours for dollars - they'll be out-paced and out-maneuvered by those who acquire and use all their assets.

They should change the name to "trickle ON", it's a far more accurate portrayal.

True!!!

The separation of GDP/capita and Median Household Income began sometime around 1968-1974, diverging most significantly after the Nixon Shock and the end of the Gold standard, the end of the Vietname War, the end of the Draft, and SALT I, all long before the Reagan tax-cuts. Also, the steady and parallel rise of both metrics throughout the mid 60s followed JFK's massive tax cuts passed in late 1963, not to mention the Vietnam War, the Interstate Highway System and subsequent suburban sprawl (an ecological, sociological, and political disaster!), and a massive nuclear arms race. Despite the rhetoric for and against Supply-Side Economics, US government and Federal Reserve policy has been essentially Neo-Keynesian for the last 22 years, and even in the heyday of 'Reaganomics' the actual policies were more a mixture of Keynes and Monetarism. So it would seem the increasing divide has nothing to do with 'tax cuts for the rich.' Also, one very overlooked factor is the concurrent rise in the number of single-parent households that exploded after 1972 when the US Supreme Court essentially voided every marriage contract, making no-fault unilateral divorce a 'right.' Also, the number of women in full time employment has exploded since the early 1970s, which - by the laws of supply and demand - has brought down labor rates. Consequently, several million intact families with one wage earner making 50k, have been replaced by two broken families each with one wage earner making 35k. Of course the Median Household income has not kept up with GDP/capita. However, the recent asset bubble and the prior dot.com bubble could have been avoided (or at least minimized) if governments had back in 1997 (like they should have) implemented higher marginal taxrates on upper INVESTMENT income, and ALSO revoked/reduced the tax exempt status of contributions to IRAs and 401Ks - as this excess cash was what was driving the bubbles. But this would not have had much effect on bringing Median Household Income back up to Per Capita GDP. Also, putting such tax policies through NOW at the dawn of a depression will only make that depression far deeper and longer. Finally, Stormarm's exactly right: as an economy grows past the initial phase of a debt-cycle (depression to depression), Capital's share of the economy will grow while Labor's share will decrease, and the divide will widen steadily. (Capital enjoys exponential returns; labor typically gets only arithmetic returns.) Increased government spending (with or without disproportionate/progressive taxes) will not change this, though it may have a short-term effect. But short of 'buying up labor' (making more people government employees) at inflated rates (the way the government buys up corn) and buying up a greater percentage of the labor force every single year (going far beyond their methods of price-supports for corn), there's nothing government spending can do to keep labor's share equal to capital's share over an entire debt cycle. The good news is, we're at the end of a debt cycle now, and will soon see the dawn of a new one to last another 50-80 years - unless the governments really F it up. And the fact is, 'all the wealth in the world' has just lost 40% of it's value in the last 10 months. That loss has fallen predominately on the owners of capital (though the small-time ones have probably suffered far more proportionally than the big time ones). Asset values have crashed and haven't hit bottom yet. Meanwhile, Labor has only really lost less than 10% of its value, and while it will no doubt lose a little more this year, a 10-15% drop is nothing compared with a 50-60% drop. As the new cycle starts, real household income should increase on par with per-capita GDP over the next 20-30 years - and will do even better if we cut the divorce rate. Also, given the 'Birth Derth', it will increasingly be a sellers' market for labor as the Boomers retire. So just on economic and demographic factors, it's a pretty good time to be under 40: more and more workers exiting the market than are entering every day, coupled with cheap land, houses, and other assets. The one damper on the party is the prospect of having 60-90% of your income stripped away to pay for Social Security and the Government bailouts and "stimulus packages", and future growth stifled by apocalyptic environmentalists.

If you broadly define "trickle down" as The War On The Middle-Class, then yes, the verdict is in. "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." ---Warren Buffet, 2006 Almost every economic policy of our political elites since the 1970s has had the effect (deliberate or not) of crushing the middle class. Deregulation, union busting, regressive taxation (i.e. cutting top marginal income tax rates and borrowing the Social Security tax to make up for it), bailouts of large companies, trade 'liberalization' (i.e. let multinational companies do labor arbitrage in a 'race to the bottom'), failure to solve our dependence on imported oil, the skyrocketing cost of education, etc., etc., etc. In 1970, the top 13,400 households in America had an average income (inflation adjusted dollars) of about $3.6 million each. In 2000, the top 13,400 had an average income of $24 million each. Did they get 6 times more productive in 30 years? HELL NO! They just got 6 times better at rigging the game in their favor. http://www.lcurve.org/

Yes it is. You'll find that those who benefited from trickle down will use every statistic available to justify their screwing over the of the working class. But the reality is: America is no longer a producing nation. The rich have gotten richer, and the workers are poorer.

You should notice that the wealth of the top 10% tracked the GDP. Almost all of the gains. since Regan show that the economy trickles up. Changes in the inheritance laws now insure that the money stays there. Paris Hilton is safe, the bottom 90% of us are in a decline that gets steeper every year. Some day there will be low class and the rich. That is the goal of the neo-cons and there are no conservatives and few progressives that can oppose this. Obama is the last hope of the middle class. He's not perfect but he's the best we have.

Oops.