Trickle "UP" Economics or "Fountain" Economics

originally posted by: VP740
a reply to: mOjOm

A catch phrase on Google. I'm sure all those links are scientific and unbiased.

Like I said earlier. It proves itself true. You don't need science or an educated expert to explain the reality of this. Just look at the world. It's undeniable. It's self evident.

You're choosing to ignore it by assuming the tenants of the idea are somehow going to be lying to you. But just read about it for yourself. It's obvious to anyone who looks at the world. The problem is we've already bought into the lie which has turned the truth on it's head and it's called "Trickle Down." Just flat out wrong and it's been proven to be wrong. If you don't believe it's been proven, just look at reality for yourself.

originally posted by: Esoterotica
Hey Mojom, what is your opinion of a Maximum wage & do you think it could fit into your concept at all?

It would be difficult to implement but could force a lot more money back into company coffers & employee salaries overall.

I think maximum wage or maximum ratio is a very valid method to use. But it's not the only method. But definitely one way it would work. However, it only works if you're talking about large enough net incomes. A middle class business where the top earner barely makes more than anyone below them wouldn't matter.

You have to remember that you have to be tapping into where the money is stagnate. So for a middle class business where the ratio from top to bottom isn't large enough at the top, you'd give them tax breaks or something effectively making that income larger as a result.

Basically the ratio idea works great because it keeps the ratio from top to bottom functional. Which right there would solve a lot of it. Again because right now we have a gradual incline from bottom toward the top but somewhere about upper middle it stops being gradual and just shoots straight up. So now we have the wealth way up and a drop off to the next class below them. This is not functional.

the problem is that once it gets to the top, it is getting shifted to that other economy, the stocks, the bonds, the dirivatives, ect. instead of being used to hire people, build businesses, and other things that would send the money back down the line. Somehow, we need to make it more profitable to build businesses that need employees than buying and selling those pieces of paper.

originally posted by: VP740
a reply to: Abysha

Wouldn't welfare be a form of fountain economics?

Yes, that is another method of how you get wealth from the destination back to the bottom where it flows back to the source again. Again, it's only one method and it isn't being instituted correctly or properly currently but the idea about it is accurate.

a reply to: mOjOm

I've heard your description and it isn't self evident from what you said, or from what I've seen of the world. To see what I want in real life would require a great deal of economic manipulation, which I don't have the means to accomplish. I'll read what I feel like, if you don't want to discuss the issue with a skeptic, I'll leave you and your fellow enthusiasts to your selves.

a reply to: dawnstar

Correct. The problem is the wealth is staying at the top and simply cycling around at the top or just sitting there and it's a huge portion of it. It's not that there is a top. There has to be. The problem is the balance of what is at the top and what is cycling around below.

That is where the idea of inequality comes in. You don't everything being equal either. That wouldn't work. You need a top and bottom but the incline has to be one that allows functionality to continue. We don't have a ramp that goes from the ground up like an inclined ramp. We have a gradual incline ramp that near the end becomes a wall shooting straight up.

a reply to: dawnstar

Well, Business has already demonstrated it will go to great length to avoid paying taxes... up to and including buying other companies off-shore in places that have a lower tax burden and inverting the headquarters to that location, at least on paper.

What if instead of incentivizing that behavior, the American tax code was reformed to incentivize paying wages and benefits? Say a double credit for every dollar spent on wages and benefits in America for workers below Director-level? Payable for employees on your payroll only... not contract labor. And a triple credit for training expenses?

And a stable predictable flat tax rate on net income after that.

a reply to: VP740

Lol. No need to get upset.

What I'm saying is self evident is that wealth flows to the top not to the bottom. It's obvious because if it didn't work that way it would be difficult staying poor and easy to become rich from the perspective of being in the middle. But it isn't. That's because it doesn't flow back down naturally. We have to send it down before it naturally starts flowing up again from where it came. It flows back up because people on the bottom don't hold on to money. They either spend it or starve or go naked or live without anything and die. The only people who can just hold on to money and not spend it are those who have so much of it they have no reason to spend it. The poor need to spend it. The middle need and choose to spend it. The rich only choose to spend it. and that change from need to choose to no need at all gets more intense as you go up.

So basically socialism, redistribution of wealth. If I'm reading this right (which I may not be) you are suggesting a socialist system. If that's right, this is hardly a new idea.

Here's the thing:

You can hand large sums of money to the people on the bottom until the cows come home and all that will happen is most of them will immediately turn around and squander that money sending it back up.

There is often a reason why so many are at the bottom that has little to do with them being actively held down. It's the same impulse that saw so many take their shopping cards post Katrina and run out and binge on strippers and Gucci bags rather than replacing the basic necessities they had lost in the storm.

And that's what you largely enable.

a reply to: CantStandIt

would be better than the gov't giving out tax breaks for shifting part of their production to overseas markets...
which I happen to know they have done in the past.
but the major stockholders have become like the gods of the business world and they want larger profits this year than last, and it seems that alot of people seem to put quit a bit of importance on how well the stock markets doing... ever notice how some seem to think that as long as that stock market is doing great, the economy must be great also?

but then you've got that darker, mostly unregulated side of the investment world... where a great deal of profit can be made and well, when it's lost it's we the people who end up paying the tab.
to me, it seems that it should be those major stockholders, and those playing in the dark that should be having their taxes increased, since to be honest, I think the majority of our economic problems are created by them.

a reply to: CantStandIt

Now you're getting the idea. For companies who hoard their money and shelter it or hide it from the system should be punished for it.

Companies that pay their workers more, or basically voluntarily put back into the system, keep the flow happening should get tax breaks or something.

A business that pays it's workers well have people who then spend more which in turn makes for a healthy economy overall. We've had many bad policies made over the years by those who operate from a position of greed and shortsightedness.

It would be like damning off rivers to hoard the water. Then the rain putting some of it back at the top of the hill where it drains back to your lake. That's fine as long as there is enough evaporation keeping the water flowing. But if it all just sat in the lake at the bottom all the life on the hill would die as not enough would be sent to the top to flow back down. But as long as enough flows to the top again to flow down the river life would continue on the hillside. The only difference is that wealth flows up and needs to be pushed down where as water flows down and has to be put up.

originally posted by: 3NL1GHT3N3D1
So basically socialism, redistribution of wealth. If I'm reading this right (which I may not be) you are suggesting a socialist system. If that's right, this is hardly a new idea.

That is one form of it, but what we're talking about is basically just the function of how a functioning economy works and why it doesn't work. But you're right, it's not a new idea at all but it's a concept we've been convinced works in one way when it doesn't.

Redistribution of wealth is just a phrase but means something specific now. Today that phrase means socialism. But capitalism redistributes wealth too through consumerism. Both provide for a functioning economy unless the redistribution stops. If those who have the wealth aren't distributing it throughout the system the system stops. It doesn't matter what you call it.

a reply to: ketsuko

oh ya, I'd squander it!! I'd buy enough food so that I could eat everyday! I might buy myself a few more outfits instead of wearing the two sets I have days on end. Heck, I might even go to the doctor like the disability doctor suggested I do because my blood pressure was so high. I might even take my car to the doctor, maybe get the transmission fixed while I could still drive it. oh, the things I could squander it on!!!!

ya, maybe some would, but I've known people who had been working hard to build up a business go under because of finances, I've known people who had to quit work because their transportation died on them. I've had neighborhood kids come to my home at dinner time asking if they could eat with us because there was no food in their house.
for every person out there who might squander it, there's another it would be a lifeline that they'd be happy to grab hold of!!!

a reply to: dawnstar

And if it were given to you?

What happens when you make ends meet and succeed only to have what you made forcibly taken to be given to someone else?

I always hoped that when I ever made it, I'd be able to help the people in my life I knew whom I cared about who needed, not have my success taken from me to give to strangers.

originally posted by: ketsuko
Here's the thing:

You can hand large sums of money to the people on the bottom until the cows come home and all that will happen is most of them will immediately turn around and squander that money sending it back up.

There is often a reason why so many are at the bottom that has little to do with them being actively held down. It's the same impulse that saw so many take their shopping cards post Katrina and run out and binge on strippers and Gucci bags rather than replacing the basic necessities they had lost in the storm.

And that's what you largely enable.

First you need to stop looking at who's doing what and why. You're judging the way people spend money. Turn your emotions off for a minute and just look at the mechanics of it. If someone at the bottom spends money, what they spend it on still flows through the system the same way. So put that aside. Just like we put aside why someone is Rich, put aside why someone is poor, it doesn't matter. What matters right now is understanding the function of the flow of wealth. It functions because the flow happens naturally as people exchange money for labor and it trickles up toward the top. Then we find ways to send it back down so it can flow back up again.

First let's get a grasp on that. There is more issues but let's first grasp this before we complicate it with things like how we also throw larger and larger portions of wealth into big bottomless holes called "interest debt".

a reply to: ketsuko

What happens when you make ends meet and succeed only to have what you made forcibly taken to be given to someone else?

been there, done that... While I called every doctor in a three county area trying to find a surgeon that wouldn't demand a high down payment to to a surgery, well, taxes were taken from us that helped my neighbors take their children so they didn't have to fret over the poor kid's runny nose. what can I say... now I am disabled and trying to live on 700 a month!

but in the end this is gonna have to go one of three ways...
either the businesses and the wealthy will catch on and start letting that money flow down the ladder, ya know, better wages, bringing the jobs back home, start paying a little more in taxes, or the gov't will decide that it just can't keep feeding, housing, and providing for their workers and customers and that will force them to, or, well, they will find that they just can't make their money, heck they might lose their money, and will seek someplace more profitable to move to.
whatever. I guess it all depends on weather you would like a controlled landing, or a crash landing at this point.

a reply to: ketsuko

That's basically what our tax code is, that's what taxes in any form are, your hard earned money being forcibly taken from you to be given to someone else. Why not lobby to have taxes erased completely?

The Fed Wants to Test How Banks Would Handle Negative Rates

www.bloomberg.com...

And the ultimate sign of a totally disfunctional economy-- your money is so worthless, you have to pay someone to take it!!!

originally posted by: ketsuko
Here's the thing:

You can hand large sums of money to the people on the bottom until the cows come home and all that will happen is most of them will immediately turn around and squander that money sending it back up.

Correct. That is exactly what happens. That's exactly what I'm saying. You just proved my point. That's not a problem though. That is a reality of how it works. We need to see that reality for what it is and work with it. Not against it.

There is often a reason why so many are at the bottom that has little to do with them being actively held down. It's the same impulse that saw so many take their shopping cards post Katrina and run out and binge on strippers and Gucci bags rather than replacing the basic necessities they had lost in the storm.

I'm not sure what you're talking about here and I think it's made up since I don't know any strippers who take food coupons in their g-strings for tips. But rather than argue about it, let's just go with that example.

Regardless of what you think about katrina victims spending their relief money on strippers. Just understand that if that is happening, that stripper is working for her money which should be a good thing right??? That keeps her employed and she'll go spend that money and so on and our economy keeps going and the money flows up the latter again. So from a standpoint of mechanics of wealth it's another example of it trickling up.