The Wealth of Nations
A fellow Democrat made the following observation:
Trickle-down economics is a great and compelling theory. Fact is it’s an urban myth.
Trickle-down economics is not exactly an urban myth. It’s based on the theories of the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith, and I had to wade my way through his incredibly long book, The Wealth of Nations, in a class I took.
The trouble is that Adam Smith lived in and wrote for village economies of the 18th Century, and what worked then and there doesn’t work here and now.
In the 18th Century, most people knew their neighbors; they all belonged to the same church; the wealthy considered it a moral duty to take care of the poor, and both the wealthy and all the church members knew where to find the poor. The churches had enough money to help when needed, because tithing was not only common, it was often actually enforced.
You can’t expect the wealthy and/or the churches to act as the only safety net we have in today’s world, though. In the first place, nobody but the government knows who all the poor are. In the second place, the strong social contract that obligated the wealthy to take care of them no longer exists.
Also, Adam Smith’s theories assumed that most of the wealth created in a community would stay within that community. That was true then. It is no longer true.
An Adam Smith tie
Trickle-down: It worked fine in the 1700′s, but it just doesn’t work anymore. All those conservatives running around in their Adam Smith ties need to go back to school and have this explained to them.
http://www.leadershipinstitute.org/AdamSmith/
