Supply side or trickle down economics is a theory beloved by wealthy right-wingers that says giving money to wealthy makes the poor wealthier. Clearly that sounds odd, but they claim that the wealthy will use the money wisely to build businesses that will employ and enrichen the poor.
It’s all complete nonsense, of course. If you want to make a poor person wealthier, just give them the money. Give the money to the wealthy and they’ll keep it.
Consider two piles of cash. $1 billion in each. Over ten years, I’m going to give all of the money in one pile to a single person. So, $100 million a year to that one person. In the first year, I bet they’ll buy a couple of houses and a handful of cars. They’ll probably splurge on various other things too, but still have loads of cash left at the end of the year. It’s not that easy to spend loads of money. In fact, after ten years, I bet they’ll still have more than $800 million unspent and languishing in investments and bank accounts. Money that’s doing nothing but creating more wealth for our hugely wealthy individual.
Compare that to the other pile of $1 billion. This pile I’m going to share equally with 2,000 people over the same ten years. Each one will get $50,000 a year and each one will spend all of their money, every year, simply because they have to. Across the ten years, each one of them will buy a home, meaning 2,000 realtors and mortgage agents make commission, instead of just a couple. And each of them buys a car. So 2,000 salespeople make commissions, instead of a handful. But more than that, the businesses that make the parts for those cars sell much more. 2,000 wiper motors instead of five and 10,000 tires (including spares) instead of 25. Everything that they buy will benefit many more people.
Over the full ten years, those 2,000 people ensure that the full $1 billion goes back into the economy to benefit all the people. Instead of most of it being removed from the economy. In the final quarter of 2025, 2/3 of US GDP came from consumer spending. Doesn’t that show just how important it is for the country for money to be active and productive?
The acquired wealth of the wealthiest 10% is largely pointless as they don’t use it for any practical reason. It would make no real difference to them if one third of it was used to pay off the whole US debt. That would save more than $1 trillion in yearly interest payments, much of which would also end up as liquid funds in the economy. A win-win for everyone.
At the start of 2026, the wealthiest 10% of Americans have hoarded more than three times the US national debt. In fact, that small group of Americans has seized 68% of all US wealth, while the poorest 50% share just 2.5%. Clearly, money trickles up quite freely.
But wouldn’t the US be better off if the wealth was shared a bit more fairly?
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