For the last 50 years or so in the United States (and many other capitalist countries), the main economic policy pursued was to cut taxes for the rich.Conservatives assured the people that this would benefit everyone in the country, because much of that extra money given to the rich would "trickle-down" to the rest of the people.
There's only one thing wrong with that policy -- it doesn't work! These tax cuts made the rich much richer, but did not benefit anyone else. Nothing trickled down. And because of that, the policy just made the gap between the rich and the rest of the country much wider -- and it continues to do so.
Common sense should have told us that, especially after decades of failure to work. Unfortunately, it hasn't. Conservatives still are able to con large segments of the people into believing their failed theory.
Now there is a study that exposes the truth. It was done by David Hope (London School of Economics) and Julian Limberg (King's College London). They looked at the tax cut policy in 18 countries (including the U.S. and the U.K.). Here is how Bloomberg Wealth News covers their findings:
Tax cuts for rich people breed inequality without providing much of a boon to anyone else, according to a study of the advanced world that could add to the case for the wealthy to bear more of the cost of the coronavirus pandemic.
The paper, by David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London, found that such measures over the last 50 years only really benefited the individuals who were directly affected, and did little to promote jobs or growth. . . .
The authors applied an analysis amalgamating a range of levies on income, capital and assets in 18 OECD countries, including the U.S. and U.K., over the past half century.
Their findings published Wednesday counter arguments, often made in the U.S., that policies which appear to disproportionately aid richer individuals eventually feed through to the rest of the economy. The timespan of the paper ends in 2015, but Hope says such an analysis would also apply to President Donald Trump’s tax cut enacted in 2017.
“Our research suggests such policies don’t deliver the sort of trickle-down effects that proponents have claimed,” Hope said.
Here is the study for those who would like to read it.
