Precisely. I can’t tell you how many times I looked out across a flat stretch of road in the Mississippi Delta with small bits of cotton covering the shoulder like snow and thought: “Are there places beyond redemption? Places where too much poverty, too much hate, and too much igorance have thrived?” I don’t know.
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Of course it isn’t helpful. What happens in Nice affects Paris and all those people voting for Brexit in northern England sure as shit affected Londoners. Whether we like it or not, we’re one big dysfunctional family and we may want to pretend that Uncle Bubba or Sister Ignorant won’t show up at Thanksgiving dinner, but they will be there, bearing Trump pie.
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There’s a logic behind it that works nicely in the academic world (the world of “assume a frictionless spherical cow in a vacuum”). Investing fuels economic growth. The very wealthy already have plenty of consumer junk, so if you let them keep their money instead of taxing it away, what else would they do with it but invest it? That should fuel growth, right?
Now that we’ve done the experiment in the real world, we know that the economy is not a spherical cow in a vacuum. Firstly, they’ll primarily use it to buy up real estate and medical patents and other monopolizable things, driving up the prices so that no one else can afford it and they can charge exorbitant rents. That doesn’t fuel growth.
But there’s another even more perverse result. When taxes are 70%+, it doesn’t make much sense to transfer more money from the company to the execs. Most of it will be lost to taxes. So the money was kept as retained earnings and reinvested in the companies (spurring economic growth). Once the tax rates were lowered, the execs could vote themselves huge raises and bonuses and actually get the money (instead of losing it to taxes). So retained earnings went down and companies had less to reinvest in themselves - the exact opposite of what the academics intended.
It’s not so much a myth as a simplified academic model that just doesn’t work in the real world. But it’s a lot easier to explain the simple model than the complex reality, and a lot easier for people to understand. So they’re inclined to believe it, especially when someone charismatic and successful sells it to them.
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Spherical cow in a vacuum – god I love academics sometimes, and more importantly, why I love this space. Seriously. I learn something new every, single time I’m here.
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Only if they are bacon or taco flavored. Regular flavor will not do.
You have described the Republican mindset perfectly!!
Which we know works so well…
How about just the facts and leave it at that. Let the kids make up their own minds!!
I would like to think so, but nowadays…
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Generally agreed, but a minor quibble: the spherical cow supply side trickle down bullshit was not what “academics wanted”, it’s what rich people wanted.
Sure, the rich people funded some dodgy academics in order to justify their scam, but blaming the academy is misguided scapegoating. The Austrian and Chicago bastards, Hayek and Friedman et al, are not the only economists. Remember Keynes.
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For me, it’s important to remember that these people are suffering. By way of metaphor, they are sick. They know they are sick - they can see their bodies failing, they fan feel the pain. They just don’t really understand how to get better.
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True. Always sad and interesting to watch them vote against their own self interests due to low education. Just another reason education (REAL education, not “God said so” education) is a good thing!
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I think the same thing–are there places beyond redemption?–and I don’t know either, but I think we have to try. And maybe we can build on the good things that brought people here in the first place.
That makes me think of something else: the changing face of the south. Nashville, TN is one of the few places in the US that was an Iraqi voting site, mainly because of the large number of refugees that came here following the first Gulf War.
I don’t mean to erase or downplay the terrible, brutal history of this place, but there are people coming here because they want to who are changing it, who are writing a whole new history. And because it’s mostly a voluntary migration hopefully we’ll see a better future.
Edited to add:
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…and why it’s soooo popular among Republican governments 
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Sniff, seriously. Sniff, sigh, ugly cry. I’ll share a story, if you don’t mind. If you do, I’m sharing anyway. I live in deep southern territory. My 13-year-old son has a transgendered friend. He’s known him since 2nd grade and we’ve witnessed the transition. I don’t want to speculate about the horrible travails this family has had to endure. All I know is this: It’s no big deal to my son or his friends. He’s been over for sleepovers like anyone else with us and others and I’m awed by the nonchalance. I literally had a conversation where I told him that nothing was amiss with his friend and how we should treat all people with respect yada yada yada and he said (I shit you not): “Mom! It’s no big deal! Just stop it! [insert lyrics from the Fresh Prince here].” So, I hold on to this when I feel there’s no hope because that, to me, is fucking amazing.
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“Yo homes, smell ya later?”
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I 
this so much.
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And it all ties in with Puritanism, the Protestant work ethic, Prosperity gospels… where either the rich or God will be showering* you with gold if you keep doing the same thing you’ve been doing that’s just made you poorer.
*Never mind that the only shower of gold involves getting pissed down on…
There’s a reason why even Republicans used to call this “Voodoo Economics” - it doesn’t even work in theory. In theory, it’s consumer demand for goods which spurs increased production that requires more workers and investment in businesses. Without actual demand, there’s nothing to invest in (that actually creates economic growth). Corporate tax breaks just result in increased profits and individual tax breaks just result in money being put in financial schemes that extract money from systems without creating anything of worth (e.g. the speculative schemes you mention). So in theory, responding to economic problems that involve a hollowed-out middle class (and thus reduced consumer demand) with tax breaks is just nuts.
This isn’t just a case of the frictionless, spherical cow - it’s also made out of exotic matter that violates the known laws of physics.
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Oh absolutely there were competing ideas. I don’t know to what degree the wealthy actually funded economists to justify what they wanted, or just cherry picked what they liked from the competing academics and condensed it to sound bites. (Or for that matter, which of the economists had a particularly wealthy background/bias). But either way, they got a nice tidy model that was easy to explain and sounded good on the surface.
Keynes was before Friedman, so it’s likely that some people saw Friedman’s ideas as progress, especially if they felt the Keynesian model was failing them. Lately I’ve been reading about the history of how these ideas have evolved over time and what actually happened when some of them faced the real world. It’s fascinating stuff.
It’s complicated, to be sure. And many of the trickle-down twits probably did believe the bullshit they were pushing, just as there are people who honestly believe that climate change is a conspiracy of scientific socialists.
But I think it’s important not to allow the right to get away with passing off the catastrophe of neoliberal economics as just a failed act of altruism. It wasn’t.
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You mean “King County” which provides the income (and population that generates it) for the rest of the state.
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