Trickle down what ...

since we are talking about the trickle down theory of economics. 

i got that and you also feed the world by giving everyone in it food.  but how does it work with some specificity, in a practical sense, given our current situation? 

Do you know what caused that crisis? Clearly you choose to read what fits the narrative that matches your politics. Look up causes of housing crisis and then get back with us. Just heads up you will found out that both parties played a part in the cause, however when it was becoming obvious that houses were going to people who would not be able to afford them, then Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Maxine Waters stood in the way of shutting it down. The crisis exploded. You know what happened prior to the 2007 peak in housing prices? Democrats took control of Congress in 2006. Somehow that part gets left out because the Democrats have talking points that are lies. Their constituency is made up of a lot of lower income people who do not bother to see if what they are being told is true. The Dems know this, throw in a media that will not ask why stuff is being left out of the story line and you get people assessing blame on the wrong group.

Barney Frank

If that were true, would it be a bad thing?

With that being said, it isn't true.

Natural upswings in the economy create prosperity.  Overrated tax cuts are given undeserved credit by politicians.  When correlation analysis  is conducted on a century of data, trickle down economics has weak correlation.

Trickle down economics is a success for those at the top, and a relative failure for the middle and lower classes.  The main theory behind trickle down economics is that tax breaks and business regulations are there to put money in the business owners accounts.  The theory then says that the money will then be used to hire more people to grow businesses.  So trickle down only works if the top 10% are creating jobs. Unfortunately, what has happened is that the business owners create jobs, but not enough to justify all the money staying at the top.

What has proven to happen is that the super rich keep the money for personal wealth, or invest in the stock market...again for personal wealth.  Big businesses give the board of directors big raises, but not the workers.

In one sentence, the theory behind trickle down economics looks great on paper, but if the top 10% don't hold up their end of the deal by creating jobs in the private sector then it is a failure for the middle and lower classes.

True, we have prosperity...but it is unbalanced.  Prosperity has grown exponentially for the rich...but it has plateaued or gone down for the middle and lower classes.  So when you look at prosperity, you must look at where in the society does prosperity exist.  The trick is to keep the prosperity balanced because a strong middle class is the backbone to basic capitalism.  If the middle class dwindles or disappears...our economic structure becomes unbalanced and impossible to recreate. 

Central planners did a great job in Greece "ballancing" prosperity.

Hopefully, leaders and economists can learn a lot from Greece.  Greece (both government and private sectors) outspent themselves.  Companies overinvested in pensions giving retired workers up to 90% of their salary after they retired.  That was a system that was never going to hold up.

One other thing about Greece.  It's been known for a loooooong time that the people of Greece live waaaaaay beyond their means.  They are notorious for having a huge party, night life, and people spend money regardless of whether they have it or not.

The government borrowed too much money to try and increase wages, and once they converted to the Euro their credit rating was so bad they defaulted on everything.  The good thing is that when they defaulted on all their debt, they were forced to fix things.  There were also 2 tipping points.

1.  They hosted the olympics which seemed like a great idea but it ended up costing them over double what they thought it would (look at who has hosted olympics over the years...it turns out it can be really bad for the cities long term).

2.  Tax evasion on the upper class got so out of control, the government lost a lot of their income, and couldn't keep up with their payments.

Several lessons, IMHO, that we can learn from Greece is that our debt is an issue that needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later.  Government is going to need a combination of more efficient spending, and increased revenue which unfortunately means higher taxes.  The government has made several good investments...most of the bailout money from the banks has been repaid...but they've made some bad investments in green energy companies.  Regardless of how good the intentions are behind those investments, we can't afford many more mistakes.  The good news is that we aren't even close to the dire situation that Greece was in, and we have a huge economy with lots of ways to fix our deficits...but it's got to start soon. 

Thanks liberals for sabotaging the economy by requiring banks and lenders to suppress underwriting criteria to allow people to get loans for houses they couldn't afford.