Supply side or trickle down economics is a theory loved by wealthy right-wingers that says giving money to the wealthy makes the poor wealthier. They claim that the wealthy will use the money wisely to make everyone wealthier.
It’s complete nonsense, of course. If you want to make a poor person wealthier, give them the money.
Consider two piles of cash. $1 billion in each. Over ten years, I give all of the money in one pile to a single person. $100 million a year to that one person. In the first year, they’ll buy a couple of houses and a handful of cars. They’ll probably splurge on 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. After ten years, I bet they’ll still have more than $800 million sitting in investments. 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 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 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 8,000 tires instead of 20. 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. In the final quarter of 2025, 2/3 of US GDP came from consumer spending. That’s how important it is to the country for money to be active and productive.
The wealth of the wealthiest 10% is largely unusued. 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 a year in interest payments, much of which would also end up as cash in the economy. A win-win for everyone.
By the start of 2026, the wealthiest 10% of Americans had hoarded more than three times the US national debt. In fact, that small group of Americans has seized 68.3% of all US wealth, while the poorest 50% share just 2.5%.
So why doesn’t money trickle down like it’s meant to?
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