Why do conservatives still believe in trickle-down economics?
There is no such thing as trickle-down economics. The term is a pejorative term for supply-side economics, which is essentially a term for what is essentially classical economics, or what came before the Keynesian economics which is mostly used in academia today, mixed with a bit of Monetarist theory, from Friedman’s Chicago school of Economics.For extreme simplicity, I will explain why the general concept makes sense by only focusing on the name “supply-side economics”. The name implies that supply drives economics, not demand. That goes counter to most of what is taught in economics classes today, but think about it this way: Economic transactions can only occur among objects which exist, so clearly that means the supply must come before the demand, and demand follows.Admittedly, this is a tiny bit simplistic, as there can be a market demand for something which does not yet exist, but that is the extreme edge case of economics, and so the vast majority of the time, the concept is sound. The edge cases where demand comes before supply involve cases where a brand new product is created, or a brand new material is discovered, where an entrepreneur, or an R&D department of a large company, comes up with a once in a generation world-changing idea for a product, which is not like anything else, and creates its own entire market. Something that the world had never seen before its initial creation, like when Steve Jobs came up with the idea for, and then brought to market, an extremely thin cellphone with a touch screen interface which doubles as a powerful personal computer; a device which clearly never existed 20 years ago.Hope that helps!
Can Republicans defend against the accusation of supporting "Trickle Down" economics?
Republicans don’t like the use of the term “trickle down” and perhaps rightfully so, because the term is a bit argumentative—but that’s politics. The issue you raise is whether they support this proposition: the concentration of wealth in private persons and institutions is likely to result in more productive investments than the accumulation of wealth in government institutions. And I think they do, but they are a little dodgy about it. The reason for the dodge is that this proposition is verifiable. You can compare the economic behavior of economies that allow unrestricted private wealth accumulation with those that don’t, and the result appears to support a higher rate of taxation than we presently endure, that is, if the value of a policy consists in the productivity that ensues as a result.So, politics is meandering toward another concern. What if the accumulation of surplus results in bad investments in military adventures? Here there seems to be a consensus emerging that unites Democrats and Republicans—why support increased taxation if the funds support a military industry, and unnecessary war. It’s probably better to be investing in building bonfires. That way we don’t end up killing innocent people. It may be that this concern had more to do with Clinton’s loss in the election than bigotry—and there was a lot of bigotry. The point is that government is not an entirely trustworthy receptacle of the earned surplus of an economy, and the Republicans shouldn’t have to defend their skepticism against the “trickle down” hecklers. Perhaps the place to start is in doing something about the corruption of government.