You know, I was all set to bag on Kathleen Parker again when Thomas Sowell went and ruined everything. Sometimes, you just got leave the low hanging fruit alone and actually pick some of this “fruit” off the ground. Wait, this isn’t fruit…it’s A-grade bullshit.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely don’t want to write about anything Thomas Sowell. Jack Krier “liberally” uses his columns (read straight up steals from) to pad out his “I’m not racist because I hate Obama, look Thomas Sowell is black and hates Obama” racist anti-Obama screeds. Dr. Sowell himself is a conservative bizarro universe ambassador, and his recent article just flat out takes the cake for sheer lunacy. He’s also an economist, but you’ll never read anything remotely close to economics from him. Most of his work is spinning the right-wing echo chamber and filling articles with debunked TEA Party rhetoric.
Economics for most average people is a slippery slope, we just don’t know squat about it. It’s why we depend on economists and those who write about the topic to sort of hash this stuff out. And while I’m not as well versed in economics and the machinations therein as I’d like, I can’t help but lean on my crutch of social justice when looking at things like the economy. Mr. Sowell, with all his economics acumen, insists that there is no such thing as the trickle down economics…”theory“.
Being a Thomas Sowell article, it’s a continuation of empty partisan hate rhetoric and other right-wing baloney, that’s hungrily gobbled up by his readers. Who, from the comments section, don’t necessarily comprehend what he’s writing about, but since he has a Dr. in his title, he must know what he’s talking about right? So, parrot away!
To be fair, Dr. Sowell is an economist, who really doesn’t write all that much about economics, oddly enough. But he has stood by this notion that there is no such thing as trickle down economics “theory” in the past. His article is less about the trickle down “lie” and more about semantics.
This becomes slippery because trickle down is just a phrase, it’s not an economy theory. It has now become political shorthand. That doesn’t make it any less true or apt, and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s a “lie”. It’s an idea, Dr. Sowell puts the theory on it to make a seemingly baseless semantics argument. Because as he mentions in his article: “Let's stop and think. Why would anyone advocate that we "give" something to A in hopes that it would trickle down to B? Why in the world would any sane person not give it to B and cut out the middleman?” Well, why would they Dr. Sowell? Why would anyone also make it a major plank of their political ideology?
The trickle down term has proliferated itself because of it’s simplicity of understanding. Supply side economics, Reaganomics, and all the other right-wing economic strategies have all sullied themselves and have now come to be seen as negatives because they just do not work, and trickle down just goes ahead and just calls it like it is.
Dr. Sowell also waves around his hero, J.A. Schumpeter and his glorious uber-book on economics, and states that no trickle down theory exists therein, therefore it just doesn’t exist. It’s patently absurd to use a near modern turn of phrase and somehow think it’s not going to be in a some ancient tome from a man who died long before supply side economics was twinkle in Arthur Laffer’s eye. It’s sheer laziness, and is just bite sized enough that any right-wing idiot can parrot it aloud.
Sowell then goes on to quote that the Washington Post, New York Times and “professors at prestigious American universities” have attacked the trickle down economics. Then states that there can not be found anyone who has advocated it. Which is an odd paragraph since he doesn’t state anyone particular who has attacked it. You’d think he’d be able to if he’s going to say something so baseless. Hell, I’d even been fine with him just quoting one of his fellow coworkers at the Hoover Institute like Americans for Limited Government do all the time in their articles.
Dr. Sowell’s true argument is that taxes are still too high, and that they need to be lowered. But the how and why remains largely absent from any and all of his articles his writes on economics. As with his political ideology, his ideas are largely absent.
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