In your opinion do you think Reaganomics, and the trickle down theory works, ever worked and does it still work in this day and age?

~The only real profit was to get Reagan re-elected .

Economics as a whole don’t work like most people would like. Greed is the fly in the ointment. The idea behind Reaganomics is that if you allow those at the top to make money, it allows the to grow their businesses and thereby increasing their staffing and/or pay for their employees. The flaw there is that those at the top would be satisfied at some point with the money they are making. Greed stops that. But other economic models hit the same snag. Socialism sounds like a great idea until you realize that more of the money you earn is going to the government. And again…the ones at the top get more and more while the people working in the trenches are getting less and less. Greed. But it isn’t just the people at the top. All people want a bigger slice of the pie, regardless of how they work or even if they work. Look at all the cries for more entitlements, increasing minimum wage to $15/hr or more, free healthcare….the list goes on and on. Greed. Mankind is not able to get past greed to help their society to grow. And they see no incentive for giving up greed, in many cases they don’t even see it is greed that is the problem.

Wanting an increase in the minimum wage is greed? Wanting healthcare is greed? I hardly think so.

Trickle down economics hasn’t worked since the days of ancient Rome when the Emperor kept the poor happy by providing circuses in the Colosseum.

Trickle up economics is much more sensible. Unlike the rich if the poor have money they will spend it.

Wanting a sudden doubling of minimum wage for doing no extra work or effort is greed. besides, what that does is hurt the poor even worse. The jobs go to the unemployed people with experience and degrees…not the poor. Wanting free healthcare is greed…it is wanting something for nothing. Are you really trying to say that poor people aren’t greedy? I would propose the idea that if you took all the money in the world and split it evenly between every man, woman, and child, in just a few years you would end up with a few having most of the money and most having little of it. That is how it has been since the dawn of time and money.
And let’s dissect the idea of trickle up economics. How do the poor get the money? Are they working for it? Creating things? Starting businesses? Or are they just being given it so they can spend it on stuff? Are you proposing that some people go out and work for a wage so we can give that money to people that don’t? I’ll give you a hint…if that was what you were thinking, that ends with no one working. No reason to. If you work, you get less and if you don’t you get more.

^Just no…..

If you honestly want to find examples of human greed you would be best to look at the multimillionaire or billionaire class rather than people on minimum wage who are without health cover.

@flutherother while the greed of the multimillionaires and billionaires is pretty obvious, it still doesn’t answer the questions. First, just because these people have more, does that mean that poor people aren’t greedy? I suggest you look at your own answers because they point out that the answer is yes. Your opinion seems to be that we should give all the money to the poor people so they can spend it. Secondly, I would ask how the millionaire and above class made their money. Some of it was inherited, true. But others were earned through work, ingenuity, effort, etc. And sometimes through dirty deeds which just shows the power of greed. But then poor people are more likely to threaten bodily harm to take something from someone else. Another example of the power of greed. Greed is a human weakness/evil. Just being human means we are greedy to one extent or another.

@seawulf575 I would push against what seems to be your definition of greed, as “wanting something for nothing.” Usually, I think, “greed” touches on concepts of excess, of wanting more than you need. Anyway, I am not sure how people fighting for an increase in minimum wage, or for accessible healthcare, is them doing “nothing” to secure those things… I am also not sure how wanting basic things like financial stability and the health of oneself and one’s family amounts to wanting excess. Whether or not you agree with the proposed political solutions to those issues, I’m not sure you can simply call people “greedy” (or, as I read you implying, lazy), for wanting them.

@Soubresaut, Cambridge dictionary defines greed as : ” a very strong wish to continuously get more of something, especially food or money”. So every one of us is guilty of greed, myself included. I am most certainly not excluding myself. The opposite of greed is charity. In my opinion we don’t embrace charity as much as we do greed. And I am not talking about hand-outs. I’m talking about the attitude. “What about him/her/them?” instead of “What about me?” One lesson I have learned in this life is that nothing is free. So while we are talking about things like raising minimum wage, why don’t we talk about the responsibility of the worker to give a fair day’s labor? And if we find that the poor are adversely affected, do we just try raising it again and again? For healthcare, why don’t we talk about the individual being responsible to actually obey what the doctor tells them? Where is the responsibility for the patient to live a healthy lifestyle as opposed to an at risk one?
Please don’t get me wrong…I’m not pro-wealthy or anything like that. I admire companies like Ben and Jerry’s that limit the gap between the top and bottom of the company. I think most Japanese companies have the right idea by limiting what their top execs make. But more importantly, I believe that we don’t stress individual responsibility at all in this country. We have all sorts of conversations about how “we” can make things better for someone instead of addressing things that the “have-nots” can do to advance themselves. Open opportunities instead of adjusting hand-outs and regulating pay.

Reaganomics or Supply Side Economics is based on the idea that reinvestment will spur competition and innovation. It works. If you look at the economy when Reagan took over in ‘81 it was comparable to the economy when Obama took over. Carter had already told us that the days of growth and a booming economy were over and the state of the nation was the new norm. Pretty much what the Dems are telling us now. Reagan ushered in 20 years of growth and prosperity. It’s hard not to see that as success. Unemployment dropped from over 10% to 5% while the labor force grew substantially and wages rose. If you remember the 80s that was when women entered the workforce en mass. I see many similarities between the problems encountered by Reagan and those encountered by Obama with dramatically different outcomes. You don’t encourage new business by stripping the existing businesses of their capital.

I know a lot is being made of the minimum wage but there is a logical progression throughout persons working life. We seem to be trying to turn a starting job into a career. It’s not. What we are accomplishing is to eliminate the entry point into the workforce. When you graduate from HS or even college, you have no skills and no work ethic. You can’t learn them if you have no starting point. The most recent study from Seattle may add fuel to the minimum wage debate. There are both good and bad points to each side of this debate.