Hat tip to Think Progress. And listen to the applause at "it doesn't work". Here's the transcript:
"Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, they argue, that’s the price of liberty.
It’s a simple theory – one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade."
Please keep that up. Step one is making people aware that trickle-down is a lie, it's always been a lie, and if you remove that from the national psyche, you can defeat the Republican economic agenda every time. Now, it's been a part of conventional wisdom for thirty years, so it may take a while, but we have to start somewhere.
Tax cuts for the wealthy, primarily those passed by Republicans in 2001 and 2003, lowered rates for the richest Americans to historically low levels — but those cuts were followed by massive deficits and weak job growth, not the economic boom conservatives promised. Anti-regulatory policies helped lead to a predatory financial system that busted the housing market, nearly collapsed the financial industry, and threw America into a recession that largely spared — and even enriched — the nation’s wealthiest. At the same time, millions of lower- and middle-class Americans lost jobs, retirement funds, and any hope of economic prosperity in their lifetime. Under 30 years of trickle down policies, wage growth has stagnated even as CEO pay has boomed.
Not only that, but we've let our infrastructure deteriorate to the point of crumbling. The cost of higher education and health care has skyrocketed. We've stopped doing "big things", like the space program. It's not all gloom and doom, there has been progress - but we could have done so much more.
Keep it up, Mr. President. And drag your party members with you. There's a few that could stand to learn the lesson as well.