Trickle Down

Trickle-down theory - the less than elegant metaphor

that if one feeds the horse enough oats,

some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.

John Kenneth Galbraith

"The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes
that it would trickle down to the needy.

Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up.

Give it to the people at the bottom
and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow.

But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.”

Will Rogers, St. Petersburg Times, Nov 26, 1932

Much like Herbert Hoover, 

Barack Obama is a man attempting to realize a stirring new vision of his society

without cutting himself free from the dogmas of the past, 

without accepting the inevitable conflict.

Like Hoover, his is bound to fail.

Kevin Baker

The Best and the Brightest Blow it Again
Harper's

“We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are.

Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed?

Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers?

Why else would we all
by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians
be participating in its destruction?

Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern,
but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it.

We reward them so well, in fact,
that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us."

Wendell Berry

...merchants and masters complain much 

of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price 

and lessening the sale of goods.

They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits.

They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains.

They complain only of those of other people.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

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