In article <cadfje$ncj$1@news.Stanford.EDU>,
<mtfester@netMAPSONscape.net> wrote:

> Gerry <222ggg@spam.really.sucks> wrote:
> > In article <cacbet$q1f$1@news.Stanford.EDU>,
> > <mtfester@netMAPSONscape.net> wrote:
> 
> >> > One way (the government bankrupts) or the other (the government raises 
> >> > taxes to the sky), they'll never get that money back.
> >> 
> >> Sorry, but this is really, er, "imaginative" as economics go.
> 
> > As imaginative as "trickle down"?
> 
> Quite possibly.  Could you explain how this works, please?

Sadly, the last speech-reader who purportedly understood it has moved
to the big spreadsheet in the sky.

The basic idea was this though:  If you give rich folk and industry a
lot of money (tax "breaks", tax cuts, direct outlays of cash, etc.)
they will:

Throw a party - and have to hire help to accomodate it; catering,
musicians, servers, etc.
Add a wing to their house - and hire construction to accomodate it
Buy another car - The dealership will hire more salesmen, the
manufacturer will hire more line production

The theory continues that you can't have growth in an economy unless
rich folks are spending poor folks money.  This process allows the
government to hand it right over, after taking their own cut, of
course.  Also government officials get financially courted by
industries and individuals who want a wider conduit to such money. 
Everybody's happy!

This was supposed to be the diametric rhetorical opposite to the New
Deal, which hired the unemployed for public projects, provided
financial security for their years after they were usable for work (and
extracted from their paycheck to accomodate this).  All this was to
keep old, enfeebled, or the vast unemployed from starving and dying
publicly. Remember those breadlines from the depression of newly
initiated lazy bums?

In other words, by some screwed up liberal "concept", bail those who
are in trouble out of trouble. 

The trickle-down concept believed that the only way to help poor folk
was to give their tax monies to rich folks.

-- 
First they gerrymander us into one-party fiefs. Then they tell us they only
care about the swing districts. Then they complain about voter apathy.
 -- Gail Collins