I phrased that wrong: Dems put money into the hands of people who spend more money (including lower and middle class individuals), while GOP puts money into the hands of people who save instead of spend (the <1% who are already spending whatever they want). As far as overall amount of government spending my sense is that the Dems and GOP are roughly equal.
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That’s been a conservative wet dream for decades. Bush pushed it, and I’m pretty sure it was bandied around before that.
Yes, and that’s the point. The middle class was pushed into the stock market through 401k plans to help provide some stability during times of turbulence, because those plans aren’t really going to be touched. No buying or selling. But honestly, the whole thing is a huge gambling market designed to make a few people lucky winners, but in this case the biggest losers rarely carry the risk, it’s passed back on to the public.
This. 100% accurate. Big corporations rarely sink or swim through their products and services. They do it through manipulating stock prices and financial shenanigans, and the Fed backs them up to keep them solvent. Growth and profits are the only measure of success, not stability, well paid employees, and satisfied customers.
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I suppose the money can be said to “trickle up.”
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Interesting tangent:
Not that long ago, I was talking to an employed human adult in his forties who thought that if your income increases above a certain point, you end up with less money overall because you pay tax at a higher rate.
I think it would be redundant to point out this person’s political sympathies.
We talk about “pocketbook issues” in politics, and are mystified that the right does so much better on these things despite its objectively worse track record. IMO the right is just better at cynically understanding that for a lot of voters, the issue is that they couldn’t find their pocketbook with both hands and a flashlight.
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that can be true at the lowest end of the spectrum if you lose something like food stamps or healthcare subsidies or heck, unemployment. or, at higher incomes with the alternative minimum tax. though im sure that’s not what they were talking about.
ive known numerous people over the years misunderstand that higher tax rates only affect the new part of the income. confusion is an intentional part of making taxes so complicated.
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Confusion in all things financial. For some “odd” reason, “free”-market fundies who insist that capitalism must always be portrayed in textbooks as a core American value also make sure that financial literacy (including how progressive taxes work) is not a standard part of K-12 public education.
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Ah, capillary action!
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“Free-market fundies” ignore that Adam Smith, “father of capitalism”, said in Wealth of Nations that capitalist enterprises must be strictly regulated by government, lest they wield too much power and buy easily-corruptible politicians. I guess that’s easy to overlook. 
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Easy answer to that one. They’ve probably figured out that this isn’t going to be over in 2020, or 2021, and possibly not even over in 2022. They’re reacting to uncertainty about the US election, the fact that COVID is years away from being a solved problem if it ever is, and that hundreds of thousands of americans if not millions of americans (and millions more worldwide) are going to die from this.
I’ve predicted a million USA excess deaths in 2020. I stand by that. The nation is run by sociopaths. Even Wall Street greed-heads think that’s bad for business.
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