OECD finally admits 'trickle down theory' is rubbish

[Maddog]

Let me know when the Chicago School of Economics makes a statement.

Quoting the OECD on economics is akin to quoting Marx.

So you believe that the wealth has trickled down? Me and my countrymen must be missing something.

Wont happen in a Keynesian driven economy. All that government intervention will always keep people poor, and make it a struggle for the middle class. The rich are going to be fine and the gap will spread with every government attempt to help people.

[Verum]

Let me know when the Chicago School of Economics makes a statement.

Quoting the OECD on economics is akin to quoting Marx.

So you believe that the wealth has trickled down? Me and my countrymen must be missing something.

Wont happen in a Keynesian driven economy. All that government intervention will always keep people poor, and make it a struggle for the middle class. The rich are going to be fine and the gap will spread with every government attempt to help people.

The rich have got immensely richer why has it not trickled down?

[Maddog]

Let me know when the Chicago School of Economics makes a statement.

Quoting the OECD on economics is akin to quoting Marx.

So you believe that the wealth has trickled down? Me and my countrymen must be missing something.

Wont happen in a Keynesian driven economy. All that government intervention will always keep people poor, and make it a struggle for the middle class. The rich are going to be fine and the gap will spread with every government attempt to help people.

The rich have got immensely richer why has it not trickled down?

There is no industry left for it to trickle down in. The rich in your country no longer open new factories with increased sales of their products. They own companies that manufacture things in more business friendly countries.

Trickle down won't work in a nanny state, or an over regulated state like the UK. Nothing will.

[wutang]

Wont happen in a Keynesian driven economy. All that government intervention will always keep people poor, and make it a struggle for the middle class. The rich are going to be fine and the gap will spread with every government attempt to help people.

Again, this is the problem with ideologues such as yourself. When reality bitchslaps the shit out of your beliefs, as is the case here, then reality must be wrong, not your flawed beliefs.

[wutang]

The United States has a small public sector by international standards and in many ways it is the closest large industrial nation to the unknown ideal of pure capitalism. It is also interesting to note that it is also number one, or close to it, in the following areas [Richard Du Boff, Accumulation and Power, pp. 183-4]:

lowest level of job security for workers, with greatest chance of being dismissed without notice or reason.

greatest chance for a worker to become unemployed without adequate unemployment and medical insurance.

less leisure time for workers, such as holiday time.

one of the most lopsided income distribution profiles.

lowest ratio of female to male earnings, in 1987 64% of the male wage.

highest incidence of poverty in the industrial world.

among the worse rankings of all advanced industrial nations for pollutant emissions into the air.
highest murder rates.

worse ranking for life expectancy and infant morality.

It seems strange that the more laissez-faire system has the worse job security, least leisure time, highest poverty and inequality if laissez-faire will especially benefit the poor or working people. In fact, we find the more free market the regime, the worse it is for the workers. Americans have longer hours and shorter holidays than Western Europeans and more people live in poverty. 22% of American children grow up in poverty, which means that it ranks 22nd out of the 23 industrialised nations, ahead of only Mexico and behind all 15 of the pre-2004 EU countries.

According to a 2007 United Nation report, the worse places to be a child are in neo-liberal societies such as the UK and USA (the UK was bottom, at number 21 one below the US). The UNICEF report dealt with the condition of children in advanced capitalist countries and found that both the UK and US are way down the list on education, health, poverty, and well-being. While UNICEF preferred to state that this is because of a "dog eat dog society", it is hardly a coincidence that these two societies have most embraced the principles of neo-liberalism and have repeatedly attacked the labour movement, civil society in general as well as the welfare state in the interests of capital. In contrast, the social democratic northern European countries which have best results. One could also point out, for example, that Europeans enjoy more leisure time, better health, less poverty, less inequality and thus more economic security, greater intergenerational economic mobility, better access to high-quality social services like health care and education, and manage to do it all in a far more environmentally sustainable way (Europe generates about half the CO2 emissions for the same level of GDP) compared to the US or the UK.

[Verum]

Let me know when the Chicago School of Economics makes a statement.

Quoting the OECD on economics is akin to quoting Marx.

So you believe that the wealth has trickled down? Me and my countrymen must be missing something.

Wont happen in a Keynesian driven economy. All that government intervention will always keep people poor, and make it a struggle for the middle class. The rich are going to be fine and the gap will spread with every government attempt to help people.

The rich have got immensely richer why has it not trickled down?

There is no industry left for it to trickle down in. The rich in your country no longer open new factories with increased sales of their products. They own companies that manufacture things in more business friendly countries.

Trickle down won't work in a nanny state, or an over regulated state like the UK. Nothing will.

But the rich-poor gap in the US has widened too, why isn't trickle down working there?

[perro]

I went to the link provided by the OP. On the webpage were links to other articles from the same website. This one is interesting...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opi ... le2266245/

The poor are doing better than you think

The news on income and inequality is depressing. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting left behind, and the middle class is getting shafted. For most people, real incomes have been flat for decades – or so we’re told. This week, the OECD weighed in with a new report that Canada’s wealth gap is at a 30-year high. “The social contract is starting to unravel in many countries,” warned OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria.

That’s the conventional wisdom, and it’s not entirely wrong. But the reality is a lot more complicated. Although the rich have got a whole lot richer, the poor have got richer, too. In all the ways that count the most – nutrition, shelter, health, literacy, access to education, life span – the wealth gap between the rich and poor in Canada, and even the U.S., has shrunk dramatically.

“The inequality of personal well-being is sharply down,” wrote economics professor Tyler Cowen in a terrific essay, The Inequality That Matters. He points out how stark the gap between the rich and the rest was just a century ago. “Even in the wealthier countries, the average person had little formal education, worked six days a week or more, often at hard physical labour, never took vacations, and could not access most of the world’s culture. The living standards of Carnegie and Rockefeller towered above those of typical Americans, not just in terms of money but also in terms of comfort.” Bill Gates may have a much bigger house than you do, but he eats the same kind of food and wears the same kind of clothes. And thanks to him, even poor people have access to computers.

The concentration of wealth was also more extreme back then. In 1918, John D. Rockefeller’s fortune accounted for more than half of 1 per cent of total private wealth, according to economist Walter Williams. That amounts to the combined wealth of Bill Gates and 11 other multibillionaires all rolled together.

Many experts argue that standard measurements of income dramatically understate the real gains in wealth, because they don’t adequately measure tax transfers and fail to reflect huge gains in purchasing power. Two American academics, Bruce Meyer of the University of Chicago and James Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame, make the startling claim that, if you take these factors into account, the incomes of U.S. middle-class families rose by more than 50 per cent in real terms between 1980 and 2009. Poor families fared almost as well.

[Guest]

I went to the link provided by the OP. On the webpage were links to other articles from the same website. This one is interesting...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opi ... le2266245/

The poor are doing better than you think

The news on income and inequality is depressing. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting left behind, and the middle class is getting shafted. For most people, real incomes have been flat for decades – or so we’re told. This week, the OECD weighed in with a new report that Canada’s wealth gap is at a 30-year high. “The social contract is starting to unravel in many countries,” warned OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria.

That’s the conventional wisdom, and it’s not entirely wrong. But the reality is a lot more complicated. Although the rich have got a whole lot richer, the poor have got richer, too. In all the ways that count the most – nutrition, shelter, health, literacy, access to education, life span – the wealth gap between the rich and poor in Canada, and even the U.S., has shrunk dramatically.

“The inequality of personal well-being is sharply down,” wrote economics professor Tyler Cowen in a terrific essay, The Inequality That Matters. He points out how stark the gap between the rich and the rest was just a century ago. “Even in the wealthier countries, the average person had little formal education, worked six days a week or more, often at hard physical labour, never took vacations, and could not access most of the world’s culture. The living standards of Carnegie and Rockefeller towered above those of typical Americans, not just in terms of money but also in terms of comfort.” Bill Gates may have a much bigger house than you do, but he eats the same kind of food and wears the same kind of clothes. And thanks to him, even poor people have access to computers.

The concentration of wealth was also more extreme back then. In 1918, John D. Rockefeller’s fortune accounted for more than half of 1 per cent of total private wealth, according to economist Walter Williams. That amounts to the combined wealth of Bill Gates and 11 other multibillionaires all rolled together.

Many experts argue that standard measurements of income dramatically understate the real gains in wealth, because they don’t adequately measure tax transfers and fail to reflect huge gains in purchasing power. Two American academics, Bruce Meyer of the University of Chicago and James Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame, make the startling claim that, if you take these factors into account, the incomes of U.S. middle-class families rose by more than 50 per cent in real terms between 1980 and 2009. Poor families fared almost as well.

[Verum]

I went to the link provided by the OP. On the webpage were links to other articles from the same website. This one is interesting...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opi ... le2266245/

The poor are doing better than you think

The news on income and inequality is depressing. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting left behind, and the middle class is getting shafted. For most people, real incomes have been flat for decades – or so we’re told. This week, the OECD weighed in with a new report that Canada’s wealth gap is at a 30-year high. “The social contract is starting to unravel in many countries,” warned OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria.

That’s the conventional wisdom, and it’s not entirely wrong. But the reality is a lot more complicated. Although the rich have got a whole lot richer, the poor have got richer, too. In all the ways that count the most – nutrition, shelter, health, literacy, access to education, life span – the wealth gap between the rich and poor in Canada, and even the U.S., has shrunk dramatically.

“The inequality of personal well-being is sharply down,” wrote economics professor Tyler Cowen in a terrific essay, The Inequality That Matters. He points out how stark the gap between the rich and the rest was just a century ago. “Even in the wealthier countries, the average person had little formal education, worked six days a week or more, often at hard physical labour, never took vacations, and could not access most of the world’s culture. The living standards of Carnegie and Rockefeller towered above those of typical Americans, not just in terms of money but also in terms of comfort.” Bill Gates may have a much bigger house than you do, but he eats the same kind of food and wears the same kind of clothes. And thanks to him, even poor people have access to computers.

The concentration of wealth was also more extreme back then. In 1918, John D. Rockefeller’s fortune accounted for more than half of 1 per cent of total private wealth, according to economist Walter Williams. That amounts to the combined wealth of Bill Gates and 11 other multibillionaires all rolled together.

Many experts argue that standard measurements of income dramatically understate the real gains in wealth, because they don’t adequately measure tax transfers and fail to reflect huge gains in purchasing power. Two American academics, Bruce Meyer of the University of Chicago and James Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame, make the startling claim that, if you take these factors into account, the incomes of U.S. middle-class families rose by more than 50 per cent in real terms between 1980 and 2009. Poor families fared almost as well.

So trickle down is working in the North America but no-where else? Confusing, isn't it? Or is the fly in this particular optimistic ointment "in all the ways that count" - a subjective judgement not an objective measure?

[Cactus Jack]

Let me know when the Chicago School of Economics makes a statement.

Quoting the OECD on economics is akin to quoting Marx.

What the well respected international authority on world economic the Chicago School of Economics has an opinion. I think Mrs Minivers Infants school probably has a better reputation.

For those who don't know The Chicago School of Economics founded Monetarism and the Neoclassical theory that governed all thinking in financial institutions in the past 11 years (the Chinese Boom and Bust)

[Cactus Jack]

Righties can substitute Brown for Chinese is they so wish - it's inaccurate but it lets them know the period and the practices to which I refer. Deregulated trading on increasing debt leverage with reduced capitalisation - or gambling as some called it

[Guest]

Let me know when the Chicago School of Economics makes a statement.

Quoting the OECD on economics is akin to quoting Marx.

So you believe that the wealth has trickled down? Me and my countrymen must be missing something.

Wont happen in a Keynesian driven economy. All that government intervention will always keep people poor, and make it a struggle for the middle class. The rich are going to be fine and the gap will spread with every government attempt to help people.

The rich have got immensely richer why has it not trickled down?

There is no industry left for it to trickle down in. The rich in your country no longer open new factories with increased sales of their products. They own companies that manufacture things in more business friendly countries.

Trickle down won't work in a nanny state, or an over regulated state like the UK. Nothing will.

What a load of bollocks. People need extra help from the state because there is NO TRICKLE DOWN.

[Maddog]

Me and mine dont. I guess we are special.

[Verum]

Me and mine dont. I guess we are special.

Fortunate, I'd say.

[Verum]

Let me know when the Chicago School of Economics makes a statement.

Quoting the OECD on economics is akin to quoting Marx.

What the well respected international authority on world economic the Chicago School of Economics has an opinion. I think Mrs Minivers Infants school probably has a better reputation.

For those who don't know The Chicago School of Economics founded Monetarism and the Neoclassical theory that governed all thinking in financial institutions in the past 11 years (the Chinese Boom and Bust)

I see, thanks. So for them to recant is a bit like the pope admitting Jesus is a myth.