What will really kill us?

If trickle-down and excessive consumption didn’t make me so angry, I would have to laugh hysterically at the absurdity that a majority of US citizens, if not now the world, actually buy and believe.  If you listen to the large corporations, the mega-rich, the one percent, they will assure you that (1) you must continue to consume well beyond your means so that their corporations can continue to make a profit. They will tell you with crocodile tears in their eyes that, if you do not, they will go out of business and the world will come to an end.  (2)  They will try to convince you that if you continue to make them unbelievably wealthy, you will have enough to feed your family.  Trickle-down has been around for almost 130 years and hasn’t worked yet. Quite the contrary. 

The term "Trickle Down" is credited to the humorist, Will Rogers, who was making fun of President Hoover's suply-side economics which were failing miserably. Trickle down is supply-side economics. The concept, however, goes back into the 19th century where it was called the Horse and Sparrow theory.  That theory held that if you feed the horse enough good oats even the birds will eat.  I'm sure you have figured out how, or I should say 'what', the birds eat. (If you're a bit slow this evening, horses do not digest their food particularly well and a lot of grains, seeds, etc., come out the rear end in their feces. That's what the birds get to eat.)  That's what we, the taxpayers, get. 

Stop and use your own common sense. There is a tax, legal and physical difference between the super-wealthy and their corporations.  If you give a tax break to the super-wealthy they will probably invest that money, which will make them even more wealthy, but that doesn’t mean jobs. Their investments will be in stocks, bonds and other negotiables.  Check it out. Read and ask questions. There is no direct link between giving a super-rich person a tax break and creating jobs.  If they put that money into one or more of their own corporations, they still get something in return, and the corporation gets capital.  A publicly traded corporation has two primary sources of income: (i) the sale of their product or service; (ii) the sale of stocks. How well their stock does on the stock exchange is determined by how well the company is doing.  Besides sales and market share, how much those who buy the stocks get in return; in the form of dividends, splits, etc.; is an important success indicator.  A big corporation is designed to make money.  If you were given a large sum of money; e.g. a tax break; where would you put that money?  (Don’t forget how you make your money!)  . . . .  well, of course, you’re going to give as much of it as possible to your stockholders because you want your stocks to sell well and bring you more money. It doesn’t pay to give it to your employees, and it costs money to hire more employees. You don’t do that unless demand has increased or you have significantly increased your share of the market. If you give too much to your employees, your stock holders are going to bitch, and they are a primary source of income.  A mega-corporation can’t survive without happy stock-holders.  Bottom-line; which is the most important thing in the world to a mega-corporation; is that if you give a mega-corporation a tax break that money is going to go just about anywhere except employees or development.  If you are a super-rich person and you are given a tax break, even if you put that money into your corporation, it isn’t going to go to the employee. Trickle down has never worked.  (Footnote: most of this knowledge comes from reading, which you can do, and the fact that I once held a Federal Securities and Exchange Commission License, generalists license, brokers license, etc., and did corporate taxes. So I have some fairly good experience and insight.)  

Unfortunately, people continue to believe the rich. They believe the rich just like they believed a member of that one-percent who ran for President and said he was going to “drain the swamp”. Yeah, right!  He filled our government with incompetent super-rich people, whose goals are total contradictory to the safeguards they are supposed to be protecting on our behalf. For what? More profits for the one-percent.  

But you know all this, whether or not you want to accept or admit it. You’ve seen the evidence.  And if you use your own brain and think things through, you would know that if all these mega-rich were to lose their business immediately the world would not come to an end.  Yes, it would be a mess and quite difficult because most of us know nothing other than capitalism. BUT we would find alternative ways of carrying on and the world would most likely be better for the experience.

In Ireland we had a bank strike that lasted almost six months. The banks assumed that the economy would come to a screeching halt without them.  The reality was that people found other ways of carrying on business without the banks.  Some data even shows that the Irish economy prospered during the bank strike.  Why is it that Americans can be so easily convinced that the world would come to an end if General Motors or the Koch brothers went out of business?  Because they’ve conditioned us like one of Pavlov’s dogs.  If capitalism were to suddenly crash, it wouldn’t be easy. But there is a big difference between there being hard times and it being fatal. 

Refusing to indulge the super-rich will not kill us!  What will really kill us will be air pollution, water pollution, mountains of trash, the destruction of forests and wilderness area, the eradication of entire species of animals that help maintain ecological balance, just to name a few, that are a direct result of our over-population and out-of-control product consumption. You can not continue to buy more things every year.  We are our own worst enemy and as long as we believe the mega-rich who suck our life blood, and expect us to return for more, things are only going to get worse.