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

[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/