"Elizabeth Warren Simplifies Thomas Piketty: 'Trickle Down Doesn't Work. Never Did'"

[applegrove]

Elizabeth Warren Simplifies Thomas Piketty: 'Trickle Down Doesn't Work. Never Did'

by Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/elizabeth-warren-thomas-piketty_n_5213690.html

"SNIP.......................

The No. 2 author on Amazon's best-seller list, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, weighed in Thursday night on the No. 1 book, identifying overlapping themes.

At a reading at the Harvard Book Store, the Massachusetts Democrat, author of A Fighting Chance, was asked about Thomas Piketty's new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and specifically about its contention that trickle-down economics "definitively do not work."

Warren cut in. "Can we say that part again? 'Definitely do not work,'" she repeated. "Not as in that's somebody else's opinion or this comes out of a long-held political opinion. The data don't lie on this. He's got good historical data, and boy, what it shows is trickle down doesn't work. Never did, doesn't work. Just so we're all clear on the baseline. I just saved you 1,100 pages of reading." (The book is shorter than that; Warren may have assumed the audience would also read the online technical index.)

Warren, whose own book was going to be titled Rigged but ultimately went out with a more hopeful title, said that while Piketty's book could elicit despair, she found a hopeful note in it, too.


.....................SNIP"

[Warpy]

1. Neither do rich men. They let their money work for them

Last edited Sat Apr 26, 2014, 02:50 PM - Edit history (1)

and in any sort of capitalism worth the name, their money works harder than people do, the laws make sure of that.

Piketty got that point across, too.

Advice to Sen. Warren: go with your gut. "Rigged" would have sold better.

ETA: The tax cut fairy does exist but only for the top 5% or so. Everyone else ended up paying more in regressive taxes so the rich could pay less income tax.

[erronis]

29. +1 - the rich are too busy in their counting rooms to _work_

[adirondacker]

47. +1000! nt

[Gothmog]

2. The tax cut fairy does not exist

Republicans believe in the tax cut fairy (a mythical creature who causes tax cuts to pay for themselves). Tax cuts do not pay for themselves and trickle down economics have never worked. I am looking forward to reading both Senator Warren's book and Prof. Piketty's book

[mindwalker_i]

4. Republicans don't believe that at all

They know perfectly well that trickle-down doesn't work, that it doesn't help the economy, and that it hurts middle and lower classes. A fuck, they do not give. It helps the people who pay for their reelections.

Trickle-down also hurts America in that fewer people are able to rise and do great things. We end up with fewer inventors, fewer scientists, fewer people solving problems. But again, a fuck, they do not give.

[tclambert]

9. It doesn't really help the 1%, either. A prosperous economy would enrich them a lot more.

It's as if they don't care about creating more wealth, just grabbing a bigger share of the current amount of treasure.

[Theyletmeeatcake2]

30. You nailed it with grabbing a bigger share....

These people are just money grubbing maggots that truly don't give a fuck about anyone except themselves... Eg Walmart the welfare corporation sucking at the gubment teat... Immoral and despicable

[Nevernose]

33. That's a large part of it

I think an equally large part of it short-sightedness. These people seem to be unable to think beyond next weekend, or at the very best a couple of years.

[Curmudgeoness]

38. Maybe it is true that they would prosper more

with a good economy, but remember that these predators are not only interested in the market here in the USA. They have their hands in markets all over the world. And I believe that they are betting on the Chinese to have enough money for consumer goods and that is a population they can sink their teeth into.

[Diremoon]

65. None for you

It isn't just that they want more for themselves, they don't want anyone else to have anything. It was never about "lifting all ships". It is about ramming and sinking everyone else's dinghy. Their war is, and always has been malevolent to the poor. Think Feudal system, and you will have their endgame pretty clear.

[csziggy]

68. Think pirates - take what everyone else has, any means possible

To continue your ramming and sinking analogy! I liked your comment enough to quote it below.

Welcome to DU!

[deutsey]

66. Greed only grows stronger and more voracious the more you indulge it

[rhett o rick]

3. I hate to disagree with her, but for those that introduced it, Trickle Down works

perfectly.

For about 30 years, after the end of WW II (the big one*) the middle class grew and everyone prospered. But although wealth can be created, it takes work even if you are exploiting. Stealing wealth is much easier. Via the Great Lewis Powell conspiracy, the uber wealthy changed the laws to allow them to steal from the middle class. How long do we let this go on?

*source: Herbert T. Gillis

[temporary311]

5. Agreed, it works really well.

It's just that when people say "it doesn't work," they're not looking at it from the POV of those who its supposed to benefit. Hint: If you aren't rich, it's not supposed to benefit you.

[quarbis]

10. George H W Bush called

"Voodoo" Economics in 1980.

[thesquanderer]

14. Right, and David Stockman dis-owned it

This is not news. But no matter the facts, some people will even believe their horoscopes.

[gulliver]

6. +1

Hard to find a more effective ploy. Now about "job creators...."

[mac56]

16. A Dobie Gillis reference!

I bow to you.

[rhett o rick]

18. I have some pretty crazy stuff stuck in my brain (and a lot of good stuff forgotten) but

every time I see WW II, I can hear Herbert T. Gillis.

I also remember that Maynard G. Krebs' favorite past time was watching the sheep getting dipped. Of course it was unsaid that he probably was high on MaryJane.

[mac56]

19. One of the episodes had Maynard testifying in court.

Judge: State your name.
Maynard: Maynard G. Krebs.
Judge: What does the G stand for?
Maynard: Walter.

I was five years old and thought that was the funniest line I'd ever heard.

[rhett o rick]

23. Ah yes, thank you for that. I do remember. I loved Maynard. I think that

should have been the warning sign. And we cant forget Zelda.

[Bluenorthwest]

31. Never forget Zelda, ie Sheila Kuehl, current candidate for LA County Board of

Supervisors Third District, and former Democratic member of both of California's House and Senate.
She was very great as Zelda. Very great.

[rhett o rick]

34. Very cool. Isnt Amy on Big Bang similar to Zelda's character? nm

[The Wizard]

43. Where's Milton Armitage

when you need him?

[maddiemom]

48. Warren Beatty?

[The Wizard]

59. yes

very young

[rhett o rick]

60. I had forgotten him. I do remember Ms. Weld tho. She was my second true love.

Annette, of course, was my first. I am dating myself.

[The Wizard]

61. Thalia Menninger

Tuesday Weld

[rhett o rick]

62. I could so associate with Dobie. nm

[maddiemom]

46. "...a buck private with a good conduct medal..." or how was it? u

[DirkGently]

24. It's the rationale we're fighting, not the facts.

Which may be the scariest part. A large segment of the population has embraced the idea that it doesn't even matter if your argument has anything to do with what works or what helps the country.

It only matters that you can SAY it. It's the sportsfan metaphor that permeates public discussion now. You just keep screaming for the home team, no matter what. There's a catchphrase or a stock argument for everything. Wealth creators. Welfare queens. Sharia law. Liberal bias.

A lot of people aren't even interested in thinking things through.

[Ed Suspicious]

58. Yessir.

[csziggy]

67. No, it doesn't even work for them. See the sub-thread above this one

A strong economy that spreads the wealth is more prosperous and is better for everyone, not just a very few. I think this new DUer has it right:

Diremoon
65. None for you

It isn't just that they want more for themselves, they don't want anyone else to have anything. It was never about "lifting all ships". It is about ramming and sinking everyone else's dinghy. Their war is, and always has been malevolent to the poor. Think Feudal system, and you will have their endgame pretty clear.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4880684

[alfredo]

69. Agree!

[bvar22]

7. Not when the Republicans do it,

and not when the 3rd Way (DLC) Democrats do it.

We KNOW what works.
The traditional Democratic Party Vlaues of FDR (New Deal) and LBJ(Great Society) built the largest, wealthiest, and most upwardly mobile Working/Middle Class the WORLD had ever seen.


Lets try THAT again!
I believe the Top Marginal Rate was 91%,
and "Free Trade", "Free Markets", and "Market Based Solutions" hadn't been invented yet.

[mmonk]

28. +1

[Progressive dog]

35. free trade was an FDR priority

From the Roosevelt Institute.
Encouraging free trade was one part of the Roosevelt administration's broader effort to revive the global economy and create good jobs for all Americans.
Free trade is also the focus of "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith.
Let's try that again Free trade and free markets had been invented well before FDR. FDR believed in free trade.

[bvar22]

39. NOT the way it has been implemented over the last 30 years.

FDR would not have destroyed our Working/Middle Class to enrich Wall Street and the 1%,
the way "Free Trade" and "Free Markets" are used today.

[Progressive dog]

49. Data shows that the 1% own

approximately the percentage of everything that they did in 1933. FDR decreased tariffs and worked to increase trade. The percentage of wealth held by the 1% shrank. Free trade payed a minor part in the wealth of the 1%.

[bvar22]

50. "Data shows that the 1% own approximately the percentage of everything that they did in

....the percentage of everything that they did in 1933."

And THAT is after 20+ years of de-regulated International Trade.

Do you have stats for 1975?
THAT would be the most interesting point of comparison.

[Progressive dog]

51. Huffington post interview with

Thomas Piketty has a graph (1% & 10%) going back to early 1900's.

[baldguy]

8. "The 'trickle-down' theory: the principle that the poor, who must subsist on table scraps ... "

" ... dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals." - William Blum

[DCBob]

25. For most Republicans that's the way it should be.. they totally don't understand the real problem.

That being the deck is stacked in the favor of the rich and connected. We want more than table scraps.. and to get that we need fundamental changes in the way our economy and society functions.

[alfredo]

70. The horse and sparrow theory

"If you feed the horse enough oats there is more chance that some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”

[freshwest]

11. Truth Telling you won't hear from the TheTruth©, Inc. Thanks, Elizabeth Warren!

[Enthusiast]

12. K&R! This post should have hundreds of recommendations!

[Scuba]

13. Oh, it works. Just not like how Raygun told you it would ...

[lovemydog]

15. The hopeful note in Pikkety's book

is that "it's not like an act of nature. It's not like gravity and you can't fix it," Warren said. "Piketty's book makes the point that how much equality there is ... is a matter of the policies you choose to follow and that, for example, progressive taxation and investment in everyone's education helps to level the playing field."

Warren pointed to the period from the Great Depression up through the deregulatory era that began in the 1980s as reason for hope -- a period that she noted Piketty found to be an aberration in many ways.

"It is a time when we made those investments that built America's great middle class and we made those decisions -- not we in this room, but our parents, our grandparents, they made those decisions. They said, 'You put a cop on the beat so nobody steals your pension, you do that on Wall Street.' But they also said, 'You tax progressively and then you make those investments.' For those who made it big, God bless 'em, that's great, but they've gotta pay a piece of that forward so the next kid has a chance to make it big and the kid after that and the kid after that. That's what defines America."

[rhett o rick]

21. Part of the blame goes to my generation, the Baby Boomers.

Life was good for us and we didnt heed our parents (who survived the Great Republican Depression) warnings. By 1970 my parents generation gave up trying to tell us to beware and the dismantling of the New Deal began. I personally didnt wake up until 2000 and most of the damage was done. Now it's a long road back so lets get this class war going.

[lovemydog]

26. Then some whackos

put a stupid war on a credit card. Tax the rich!

[Sunlei]

17. Now as our people in poverty & middle class slip well below!, other '1st world' Nations' one would

think Republicans would stop pretending their "Leaders" really care about all "The People".

[DCBob]

20. The Rethugs just hate the attention this book is getting.

It counters their central core ideology regarding economics. This will be the perfect issue to focus on during the 2014 and 2016 elections. If we can convince the ignorant masses that trickle-down is bogus.. then the Republicans are finished.

[Thor_MN]

22. The problem with "Trickle down does/doesn't work" is defining "works".

The argument goes round in circles, because we don't define success. Republicans see supply side as being very successful because it concentrates wealth in the hands of their owners. It's been fabulously successful for them. They will never admit what their goal is, and as long as we let the discussion hover around "does/doesn't work", the middle class and poor suffer.

My opinion, agree that it works to increase income disparity. Agree that it works to destroy the middle class. Tie the lead weight of Supply Side economics around the Republicans neck and kick them overboard.

[toby jo]

27. What's their dodge?

They've had one for 30 years.

What I hear from righties at work is: 'chico and bubba are stealing from us'. Doesn't compare to what 'the man' stole, but that never enters the equation.

Never.

So the dodge is ignorance.

If we make this a national campaign, have everybody repeat it, billboard it, commercialize it, we can break through their defenses. Book's a bomb ( good one ) Heave fucking ho.

[geretogo]

32. Trickle down has always worked for the short term for a few up until the the start of wide spread

violence and up rising from the proletariat , then peace and prosperity for a while and then the cycle
starts over again . So goes history .

[BlueEye]

36. I have both Warren's book and Piketty's

"Capital" on my summer reading list. I understand the latter is fairly dense, at 700 pages. Should be a good time.

[NBachers]

37. Trickle up, no more trickle down

[TheFrenchRazor]

40. it's surprising how few politicians are willing to say this. nt

[frazzled]

41. Obama has said it 500 times, at least

Over the years, at all the economic talks he's given around the country, he always has brought it up. Just for the record.

It always goes something like this:

"Top-down economics doesn't work," President Obama told an adoring crowd this September in Virginia Beach. "We don't need to double down on the same trickle-down policies that got us into this mess in the first place," he continued.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2012/12/16/obama039s_trickle-down_economics_297984.html

Trickle down economics, the conservative theory embraced by Ronald Reagan and virtually every conservative since, “doesn’t work,” Obama declared. And even as conservatives have clung to the idea in the face of overwhelming evidence against it, “it has never worked,” Obama added:

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, they argue, that’s the price of liberty.

It’s a simple theory – one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/06/383348/trickle-down-economics-doesnt-work-obama-asserts-in-economic-speech/

[azurnoir]

42. Thank you Ms Warren as trickle down has always been synonymous with

tinkle on

[The Wizard]

44. Trickle down

Golden parachutes for the wealthy elites who make the laws and golden showers for the working class. No thanks.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

45. You only find dispair if you are invested to the concept of never ending growth....

Instead of a sustainable balance that meets the needs of life on this rock.

[Populist_Prole]

52. What a concise summation

That's why those so consumed with getting ever more and more are never happy, no matter how much they've got.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

53. Right, to them, there is no "excess"....

Case in point:



While you might be struggling to pay the electric bill, they are convinced their shit don't stink.

[Populist_Prole]

55. Is that Rush Limpball's bathroom?

Seriously though, I am constantly chided by both my money obsessed right-wing father and his friends for my desire to work just enough to live reasonably well rather than constantly hustle for more money or more status. My attitude is incomprehensible to them.

A little missive I've read that describes my feeling perfectly:

Once a fisherman was sitting near seashore, under the shadow of a tree smoking his beedi. Suddenly a rich businessman passing by approached him and enquired as to why he was sitting under a tree smoking and not working. To this the poor fisherman replied that he had caught enough fishes for the day.

Hearing this the rich man got angry and said: Why don’t you catch more fishes instead of sitting in shadow wasting your time?

Fisherman asked: What would I do by catching more fishes?

Businessman: You could catch more fishes, sell them and earn more money, and buy a bigger boat.

Fisherman: What would I do then?

Businessman: You could go fishing in deep waters and catch even more fishes and earn even more money.

Fisherman: What would I do then?

Businessman: You could buy many boats and employ many people to work for you and earn even more money.

Fisherman: What would I do then?

Businessman: You could become a rich businessman like me.

Fisherman: What would I do then?

Businessman: You could then enjoy your life peacefully.

Fisherman: What do you think I’m doing right now?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

57. Mine is, "Those who rail the loudest about the work ethic,...

....dream of becoming rich so they'll never have to work again."

[BelgianMadCow]

56. That, and the up-trickled moneyed elite is largely hereditary

or so I have read in a review, because it's major league sold out here - and at Amazon. I'm ordering a copy.

[Nanjing to Seoul]

63. What a godless, un-American commie! Doesn't this Liberal harpie know that giving money

to the top in huge amounts always trickles down? It's like a loaf of bread with 25 slices. The upper 1% can eat 24 of them, loan the rest to the bottom 99% and tell them to be happy with the crumbs.

Seriously. . .if we started saying Republican ideas don't work, the entire American system of government would collapse.

BTW, massive sarcasm here

[HenryWallace]

64. Changing naritive

The statement “doesn’t work” isn’t strong enough.

The direct implication of the book is that unrestrained capitalism naturally leads to a less free and just society.

[intaglio]

71. Just 4 words

GET OUT THE VOTE

Start telling people now to vote their local GOP sock puppet out. Tell them to read Picketty, tell them to imagine the USA without the new healthcare ...

... and most of all start working now!