Are you ready for a Supply-Side-Voodoo-Trickle-Down Economy, without health care, environmental and Wall Street regulations?

Warning!!! Trump and the Republican House and Senate are about to usher in a full scale switch to supple side economics. 

Supply side-voodoo-trickle down economics is the Republican Party. Fortunately for us, this failed policy is now out there for everybody to see, thanks to a number of troubling red state examples.

Kansas Comeback Kid Gov. Sam Brownback took trickle-down to its illogical limit and failed. Apparently, this is what the angry, frustrated, ignored, left behind American voters wanted, and will get in January. Guess they showed us..."We won:"  

Kansas: In February 2015, three years into the supply-side economics experiment that

would upend a once steady Midwestern economy, a budget hole appeared in Kansas’ finances. To fill it, Gov. Brownback took $45 million in public education funding ... took highway money to plug it ... state money for Medicaid coverage went into the hole, but the gap continued to grow.

Today, the state’s budget hole is $345 million and threatens the foundation of this state, which was supposed to be the setting for a grand economic expansion ... The yawning deficits were caused by huge tax cuts that were supposed to set the economy roaring. They didn’t. The budget shortfalls have been felt across the state, particularly by public schools ... Brownback has repeatedly pledged his faith in the free market. “We’re going to continue to grow the economy.”

A stern lesson in theory versus reality to other states contemplating the same free-market ideas. After five years of an economic crusade that has left its originator, Brownback, as the least popular governor in the nation.

You've heard all of these theories and empty promises before:

The state would thrive, he pledged, because the tax cuts would help keep businesses and smart, young Kansans in the state. It will pave the way to the creation of tens of thousands of new jobs, bring tens of thousands of people to Kansas, and help make our state the best place in America to start and grow a small business,” Brownback wrote in 2012. “It will leave more than a billion dollars in the hands of Kansans. An expanding economy and growing population will directly benefit our schools and local governments.”

Nope, didn't happen.

Revenue from income tax collections plummeted 22 percent. A separate repeal of taxes on partnerships and limited liability companies meant the surrender of 30 percent of state revenue. State revenue estimators project receipts ... down 7.4 percent from this year’s estimate ... the state did increase the sales tax ... the second-highest sales tax in the nation ... (but) Deflation is dropping the prices of goods and the taxes the state collects on them.

The Brownback solution, kill the messenger. Its what you don't know that will hurt you. And yet, this is what government looks like under Republican control:

Tired of the bleating horn of bad news, in September Brownback silenced a quarterly economic evaluation of the state that counted employment, unemployment, personal income and energy production, and consistently illustrated the state’s plunging revenues. He had done so before, in August 2015, when he ordered a halt to a semiannual economic report. “A lot of people were confused” by the reports, said Nicole Randall, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Commerce.

Cutting the people out of knowing what was really happening economically in Kansas was only a start. Purging State Supreme Court Justices for defending the language of state Constitution was also a weapon Republicans have no problem using:  

Conservative groups supporting Brownback responded by pushing five Supreme Court justices into brutal, expensive retention races to keep their seats. The targeted justices were retained by voters and are expected to rule this month on the adequacy and fairness of the public education system in a landmark case, Gannon v. Kansas, filed by four of the state’s poorest school districts.

Supply-Side Here we Come: Voters took a chance on Trump's promise to change things, essentially draining the swamp of just Democrats. Now the hardships are about to get dramatically worse, while the nation preoccupies itself debating the latest outrageous Trump tweet. Thank you America.  

Walker joins other "Trickle Down" states by losing jobs, ginning up Resentment!!!

In an odd twist of fate, the GOP created Great Recession actually swept Republicans into power in 2010.

Those same states are now convulsing from dramatic revenue shortfalls, debt, and deferred maintenance. Even worse, Republicans are insisting that more debt, deferred maintenance, tax cuts and spending cuts will solve their problems. All this, after already slashing education for the next generation of job seekers and insane handouts to corporate freeloaders laughing under their breaths about letting the "free market" work. Jokes on us.

Under Scott Walker, who made it much harder to get unemployment benefits so he could brag about those numbers too, the state turned away jobs they say are created by company's that commonly fit into the Democratic column. Sticking with the disappearing manufacturing base at the expense of diversification, Wisconsin has forced labor...and then businesses, to leave the state.

Wisconsin's three-month run of job growth was halted in April by the largest one-month loss in jobs in nearly seven years, 11,500. If the figures stand up to revisions, it will be the state's biggest monthly jobs drop since July 2009, during the Great Recession. In April, Wisconsin lost 4,200 manufacturing jobs, 0.9 percent of the total for the state's largest job sector, to return to a flat level of growth since last October.

And business are still fleeing (just sampling):

Old National Bancorp has notified state officials it plans to eliminate 140 full-time jobs, almost all of them in Madison ... Most of the positions will terminate in September.

Caterpillar Inc. said it is moving engineering and technology jobs from its mining equipment division in South Milwaukee to Tucson, Ariz.

But other ballyhoo'ed state templates for "trickle down prosperity" are sinking fast as well. The problem is, the national news doesn't cover the failed "comebacks," like in Indiana, which sounds a whole lot like Walker's scheme (except for evil clean energy):

Stride Rite had left Huntington for Mexico at the tail end of the recession; Breyers Ice Cream had closed its doors after 100 years.

In the weeks after each factory closing in his part of Indiana, union rep. Tom Lewandowski had listened to politicians make promises about jobs — high-tech jobs, right-to-work jobs, clean-energy jobs — but instead Indiana had lost 60,000 middle-class jobs in the past decade and replaced them with a surge of low-paying work in health care, hospitality and fast food.

Scott Walker has also taken aim at the middle class:

...with a dash of irony.

Wisconsin had a faster decline than any other state in the percentage of households in the middle class during the period 2000 to 2013.

Like Wisconsin, wages are depressed and lower: 

Wages of male high school graduates had dropped 19 percent in the past two decades, and the wealth divide between the middle class and the upper class had quadrupled. Fast-food consumption was beginning to tick up. Poverty was up.

Foreclosures were up. Meth usage up. Heroin up. Death rate up. An ideological crisis was spreading across Middle America as it continued its long fall into dependency: median wages down across the country, average income down, total wealth down in the past decade by 28 percent. 

For the first time ever, the vaunted middle class was not the country’s base but a disenfranchised minority, down from 61 percent of the population in the 1970s to just 49 percent as of last year. 

And now, desperate Republicans want plunge even deeper into trickle down, topped with more empty promises, by electing a huckster like Trump. If you hate government, thank a Republicans who made government worse. We now get to see it crash:

As a result of that decline, confusion was turning into fear. Fear was giving way to resentment. Resentment was hardening into a sense of outrage that was unhinging the country’s politics and upending a presidential election.

Republicans target government, roll out Voodoo Economic.

Sen. Bernie Sanders got it right. It's dynamic scoring and the GOP's voodoo economic deceit, where a repeat of their failed policy will eventually make anyone hate government. PoliticusUSA:

The senator said the main reason Republicans want to change the budget rule is to disguise the impact of their plan.

The Republicans are politicizing the budget process in a way that will undermine the credibility of the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation, which have provided unbiased, nonpartisan analysis on the cost of tax and spending bills.

Republicans are refusing to face the reality that tax cuts for the wealthy don’t grow the economy. Instead, they are trying to rewrite the rules in order to hide their policy failures. 

Howard Dean didn't hold back either, warning Americans Republicans will now easily invent growth with magical dynamic scoring, all the while spending money:

Why is Paul Ryan so Wrong...all the Time?

Our new dystopian Republican congress has a lot of people thinking about what might happen under their control. For me, a smart Democratic plan would be to take every GOP bill and highlight what it would do. A two column analysis, one side Democratic and the other Republican, for every major bill. Dream on John, because that would be like "framing" the issues, and Democrats don't do that ever.

But reporters are still curious about those in charge, and their records to date, like Paul Ryan's:

Why is why Ryan has been so spectacularly wrong about inflation, the dollar, and, well, the whole economy the past few years.

"Pressed for cash, the government will take the easy way out," Ryan mused in 2013, and "crank up the printing presses." The result wouldn't be any run-of-the-mill inflation, but rather "the debasement of our currency." And in case you have any doubt how bad that would be, well, Lenin supposedly said that's the best way to destroy the capitalist system. So pretty bad.

In 2009, he philosophized that "a lot of people would observe that we are right now

living in an Ayn Rand novel." A year later, he all but accused the Fed of using the printing press to pay our bills … And in 2011, he somberly warned then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke that "there is nothing more insidious that a country can do its citizens than debase its currency."

It was a weird thing to be worrying about. Inflation was just 1.7 percent when Ryan brought up dollar debasement. It's 1.2 percent now. And rather than being debased, debauched or otherwise devalued, the dollar is actually up 13 percent against a broad index of currencies over this time … there hasn't been anything resembling "debasement."

Why has Paul Ryan been wrong about everything? Well, he missed what a lot of people miss, which is that the rules change when interest rates are zero. You won't learn that from Ayn Rand's books, though.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Voodoo Supply Side Trickle Down Economics.

For Republican voters, it's worth thinking about...

Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) delivered a scathing critique of trickle-down economics in which she cited former President George H.W. Bush:

"Since the 1980s, too many of the people running this country have followed one form or another of supply side — or trickle-down — economic theory. Many in Washington still support it. When all the varnish is removed, trickle-down just means helping the biggest corporations and the richest people in this country, and claiming that those big corporations and rich people could be counted to create an economy that would work for everyone else. Trickle-down was popular with big corporations and their lobbyists, but it never really made much sense."

She noted that the senior president Bush called it "voodoo economics."

"He was right, and let’s call it out for what it is: Trickle-down was nothing more than the politics of helping the rich-and-powerful get richer and more powerful, and it cut the legs out from under America’s middle class. Pretty much the whole Republican Party – and, if we’re going to be honest, too many Democrats – talked about the evils of 'big government' and called for deregulation. It sounded good, but it was really about tying the hands of regulators and turning loose big banks and giant international corporations to do whatever they wanted to do—turning them loose to rig the markets and reduce competition, to outsource more jobs, to load up on more risks and hide behind taxpayer guarantees, to sell more mortgages and credit cards that cheated people. In short, to do whatever juiced short term profits even if it came at the expense of working families. The trickle-down experiment that began in the Reagan years failed America's middle class. Sure, the rich are doing great. Giant corporations are doing great. Lobbyists are doing great. But we need an economy where everyone else who works hard gets a shot at doing great!"

Ah, Dynamic Scoring and the Magic of Trickle Down Economics about to transform the Country....

From Common Dreams, I thought this description of trickle down economics by Robert Reich said it all. I've also included the video admission by Alan Greenspan that deregulation and trickle down was a failure, for those still not convinced. Tax cuts and deregulation are conservative concepts that go hand-in-hand. Our incoming Republican majority will be doubling down on their past failures. They're going to make this work if it kills us:  

Reich: According to reports, one of the first acts of the Republican congress will be to fire Doug Elmendorf, current director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, because he won’t use “dynamic scoring” for his economic projections. Dynamic scoring is the magical-mystery math Republicans have been pushing since they came up with supply-side “trickle-down” economics.

It’s based on the belief that cutting taxes unleashes economic growth and thereby produces additional government revenue. Supposedly the added revenue more than makes up for what’s lost when Congress hands out the tax cuts. Dynamic scoring would make it easier to enact tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, because the tax cuts wouldn’t look as if they increased the budget deficit.

Incoming House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) calls it “reality-based scoring,” but it’s actually magical scoring – which is why Elmendorf, as well as all previous CBO directors have rejected it.

Few economic theories have been as thoroughly tested in the real world as supply-side economics, and so notoriously failed: Ronald Reagan cut the top income tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent and ended up nearly doubling the national debt. His first budget director, David Stockman, later confessed he dealt with embarrassing questions about future deficits with “magic asterisks” in the budgets submitted to Congress. The Congressional Budget Office didn’t buy them. George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus from Bill Clinton but then slashed taxes, mostly on the rich. The CBO found that the Bush tax cuts reduced revenues by $3 trillion.

Yet Republicans don’t want to admit supply-side economics is hokum. The CBO has continued to be a truth-telling thorn in the Republican’s side.

The budget plan Paul Ryan came up with in 2012 slashed Medicaid, cut taxes on the rich and on corporations, and replaced Medicare with a less well-funded voucher plan. Ryan claimed these measures would reduce the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office disagreed. His 2013 and 2014 budget proposals were similarly filled with magic asterisks. The CBO still wasn’t impressed. Now that Elmendorf is on the way out, presumably to be replaced by someone willing to tell Ryan and other Republicans what they’d like to hear, the way has been cleared for all the magic they can muster. Or have your benefactors finance “think tanks” filled with hired guns who will tell the public what you and your patrons want them to say. 

Fact # 2: Democrats make things better, Republicans don't. Minnesota sees $1 billion Surplus!

Republicans continue to rely on the one thing that keeps Americans from sharing in the good economic news, state and nationwide; low wages. The country is doing great, it’s just the wage gap that’s killing us, a fact not missed by Republicans who can use voter discontent to their advantage.

That said, the economy is doing quite well thank you. And yet, Scott Walker is quick to ignore the successful recovery of our colder neighbor to the west, Minnesota. Perhaps he doesn't want to make that simple but obvious economic comparison? Perhaps he also doesn't want you to know how disastrous his health care decisions were to state taxpayers.

And for "stand with Walker" defenders of our low deer kill numbers, saying we're just like Minnesota, why shouldn't we be the same when it comes to economics?

Job killing Keynesian Economics vs Supply Side Voodoo Economics: Here's a quick video report:

Gov. Mark Dayton and Minnesota lawmakers got a jolt of good budget news Thursday, as state forecasters predicted a $1 billion surplus heading into next month’s legislative session.

Republicans, who have increased the wage gap to historical levels, while rejecting minimum wage increases, are now complaining lower and middle class Minnesotans can't share in the recovery...clueless much?:

Republicans, who assume control of the state House of Representatives in January, seized on some of the warnings to note that not all Minnesotans have shared in the economic rebound. “We know that Minnesota families really haven’t seen the sort of economic benefit or surplus in their own family budgets, and this is something that’s really concerning,” said Rep. Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, who takes over as House speaker in January.

Ouch, this hurts supply-siders who see any revenue as "over-collected" taxes, instead of money to fix roads and improve education. Gov. Dayton's economy is "sputtering," which it isn't: 

Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa, said that the surplus represented money the state “over-collected” and should be returned to taxpayers. “Our economy is still sputtering,” he said, Gov. Mark Dayton said the accompanying warning signs also mean “we have to be prudent, for sure.”

Speaking of returning money to the taxpayers: Give it back in the form of low income credits and improved infrastructure:

Dayton said he likely will seek an expanded tax credit of $175 million that would help as many as 170,000 Minnesota families cover the cost of child care. Other priorities include boosting broadband Internet access in rural Minnesota, securing state funding for early childhood education scholarships, and devoting more resources to maintaining and improving the state’s roads and bridges. 

WTF Moment. While every GOP governor celebrates their various state "comebacks," like Walker's projected deficits and lousy jobs numbers, Democrats aren't allowed that luxury...

Senate Minority Leader David Hann, R-Eden Prairie, chastised Dayton and Schowalter for what he called an unwarranted “celebration” of the surplus.  

Here are the glorious details of Democratic governance. Remember, none of this came from breaking up the unions; dividing and conquering labor and voters alike:

Unemployment rate down to its lowest level in eight years, 3.9 percent (WI is 4.6). 

Long-term unemployed has been cut by more than half since its peak in mid-2010 and has dropped across age, gender and racial lines. 

The budget forecast showed a $373 million surplus for this fiscal year, which ends in June. That is after $183 million is diverted under state law to the budget reserve that has now grown to $994 million.  

Projections of tax revenues were reduced by $412 million, or 1 percent ... offset by projections of lower spending on health care.

Budget officials said that a different composition of enrollees receiving medical assistance in 2015 will result in more than $440 million in savings on health and human services.

Conservative Fond du Lac leery of Republican Legislators Voodoo Economic suggestions for city budget.

I just love this story. It shows how completely irresponsible Madison Republican legislators are about their continued use of supply side, voodoo economic policy.

First, let’s see how one state senator and one state representative would solve Fond du Lac’s budget problems. Yes, they want tax cuts. FDLReporter:

Fond du Lac City Council will take a couple more weeks to consider applying more

Trust us, we know what we're doing?

reserve funds to the 2015 budget. Sen. Rick Gudex and Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt, both former councilmen, spoke as “city residents” suggesting the Council use some or all of the $1.5 million in unassigned fund balance to help reduce the tax levy that includes a 5.4 percent increase …saying it was unfair to ask taxpayers to “pay more” in the form of a tax increase.

What makes their suggestion even more ludicrous is that it sets up a budget before the city’s reassessments are factored in, which could be dramatic.  

The tax increase, though, will vary in the wake of a citywide property revaluation, where some properties increased in value and others decreased. Thiesfeldt said “I am very uncomfortable with maintaining a fund balance well beyond Council policy of 15 percent and ... increasing taxes by 5.4 percent of equalized value. There should be some consideration to knocking that down.”

No, there shouldn't. And that was the message by the city's real managers of taxpayer money, who presented some very important reasons:

City Manager Joe Mooreand Director of Administration Hal Wortman both voiced concerns Wednesday about the use of additional fund balance to reduce a tax rate increase. Wortman said the city could get into a cycle of increasing budget deficits and would have to cut services.

Moore said by lowering the levy, no matter how it’s done, it would “re-set” the baseline property tax levy and the amount cannot be recovered. There is no additional state aid and the levy may be increased only by the percentage of new construction and increases in debt service. “If you don’t levy up to the levy limit, you've reduced your levy and that is the new base for the next budget year and years going forward,” Wortman said. “You've lost forever whatever amount you reduce it by.”

Wortman is talking about our big government Republicans in Madison, who put a fiscal straitjacket on local government:

Wortman said there would be better ways to use excess fund balance, including repayment of debt, avoidance of new debt and for economic development. “I would say stick with the levy budget as is,” he said. “It would be a poor financial decision to draw down the tax levy.”

The outright rejection of Rep. Thiesfeldt and Sen. Gudex’s budgetary suggestions tell the whole story:

Moore said the risk inherent in using the entire $1.5 million is having no fund balance at the end of 2015 for use in 2016. Previous budgets have used some fund balance to support the upcoming year’s budget. If an emergency arose, there would be no funds to draw from. 

I think this sums it up:

Council President Sam Meyer said he wanted to be comfortable about the city’s ability to pay bills in the future.

Wow! Republican State Sen. Scott Fitzgerald brags "Any shortfall created by a tax cut is fine."

Facing a possible $4 billion deficit, using the same kind of math Scott Walker has is using to bash former Gov. Jim Doyle and Mary Burke, Republicans are now starting to work into their rhetoric the benefits of deficits. Believe it or not.

The Mic 92.1's Devil's Advocates show got this "Dick Cheney" like response about deficits from Sen. Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, and how they don't really matter much. Even worse, he was speaking for Scott Walker, who would say deficits caused by tax cuts are better than your everyday kind of deficits...basically.

Fitzgerald: "He's gonna say it's a deficit created by tax cuts, that's a much different situation than what we had...Any shortfall created by a tax cut is fine."

Bush and Cheney pushed this same supply side accounting logic, and how did that turn out? $7 trillion in additional debt and counting (war/veterans costs continue).



Fitzgerald's comment is at about the 30 minute mark at the Devil's Advocates podcast site.

One-third of Country on Government Assistance: Stagnant declining paychecks in new low wage service economy at fault? No-Brainer Stumps GOP.

Government assistance! Fox News does a wonderful job of acting like they just don't get it. And if it's not act, then why the hell are they still allowed to be on the air?

The video report below even mentions raising the minimum wage as a way of solving the nations increased dependence on government assistance, and still Fox News doesn't make the connection.

It's the GOP's "blame Americans first" policy, devoid of any real solutions, except perhaps making people do some kind of work, or kicking them off the programs. There's one problem though, most people getting assistance already work; are children; are vets and seniors (the unexpected Baby Boomers bubble).

I also blame Democrats for not drawing a line connecting wages to government assistance. How hard can it be for gods sake.

Over and over again, the Fox News reporter falsely claims we need to put more people to work when the real problem is low service industry wages. This false "pity the wealth producers" spin is driving me crazy:



Here's the story containing a solution to the problem Fox News refuses to acknowledge. You'll notice the power of suggestion focuses mostly on lazy people who don't work and the wealthy who are burdened by all that dead weight:

Newly released Census data reveals nearly 110 million Americans – more than one-third of the country – are receiving government assistance of some kind. At the end of 2012, according to the stats, 51.5 million were on food stamps, while 83 million were collecting Medicaid – with some benefitting from multiple programs. 

Though the programs were created to help those in need, some analysts worry that the way they’re designed is, increasingly, incentivizing people not to work. They note that when recipients combine several government assistance programs, in many cases they pay better than going to work.  

As for concerns that these benefits pay better than working, they argue the solution is to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. "I think a lot of people would do the jobs when they pay a living wage,” said Melissa Boteach, from the Center for American Progress.

The challenge for policymakers is helping the economy adjust. "We have to figure out a way around this. Put innovation in play and really figure out how we're going to create a new economy where we can both raise wages and create more jobs for people," Boteach said.

Leave it to the Cato Institute to sympathize with the comical term "wealth producers:"

The Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner said "You can't in the long run have a society in which you have to rely on a smaller and smaller group of wealth producers who have to support more and more people who are not contributing to that wealth."

"Walker in Wonderland's" tumble into the deep dark tax cut hole.

It ain't working.

I think I know why supply side true believers think their policies work; because they blame the few remaining liberal policies for holding back "reform." But if you look closely at the numbers, the immovable facts, than all the fantasy scenario's don't amount to a hill of beans.

I just recently asked why no one did the hard work of compiling a list of all the Walker tax cuts since he took office...well someone did. From the Wisconsin Budget Project:

The largest tax cuts over the four year period include:

The income tax cut included in the 2013-15 budget, which reduced revenue by $647.9 million over this period;

The January 2014 property tax cut, which reduced revenue by $406.0 million; A tax break for businesses hiring new employees, $134.0 million;

A tax cut that will nearly eliminate income taxes for manufacturers once it is fully phased in, $126.6 million;

and A tax cut for multi-state corporations that allows them to shift some income to states with no income tax, $126.4 million. 

Here's the really ugly truth about Walker's supply side fantasies:

The Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, a nonpartisan agency, put together a list of all the tax changes enacted since January 2011. You can read the memo here. Unfortunately, tax cuts haven’t led to job growth in Wisconsin.

Not only have the tax cuts not created jobs, they have made it harder for Wisconsin to build a strong economy, by reducing the revenue that Wisconsin needs to invest in schools, transportation, safe communities, and other tried-and-true building blocks of economic growth. 

Wisconsin Congressmen try to put Voodoo Economic Spell on CBO!

Supply-side Economics: 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot was right to call it voodoo economics. Supply-siders are still convinced cutting taxes (government revenues), increase...government revenues. It’s magic.

We’re seeing this play out in Wisconsin, where “job creating” businesses has gotten everything they wanted from Scott Walker, from major tax cuts to tort reform, all without holding up their side of the bargain…jobs, jobs, jobs. And the GOP has yet to ask them to put up or shut up.

After the Reagan and George W. deficits, with a lot of help from the free market experiment that brought us the Great Recession, the only way to get people to accept supply-side was to make it into an actual law and force the CBO to use it.  

‘DYNAMIC SCORING’ BUDGET DOCTRINE: Voting 224 for and 182 against, the House on Friday passed a GOP bill (HR 1874) requiring the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to add “dynamic scoring” to its tools for forecasting the impact of proposed legislation on U.S. economic growth. A tenet of supply-side economics, dynamic scoring holds that tax and spending cuts always pay for themselves by stimulating economic activity. But the CBO, reflecting the views of mainstream economists, does not recognize dynamic scoring as empirically valid, and instead uses what is known as “static scoring” to forecast economic impacts. 

Voting yes to make their fantasy economic dream come true were Ryan, Sensenbrenner, Petri, Duffy, and Ribble. Polls show Americans might like to try this magical potion. 

In researching this failed economic BS, I came across another term; the horse and sparrow theory:

The economist John Kenneth Galbraith noted that "trickle-down economics" had been tried before in the United States in the 1890s under the name "horse and sparrow theory." He wrote, "Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy—what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: 'If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.'"

Or this...

A 2012 study by the Tax Justice Network indicates that wealth of the super-rich does not trickle down to improve the economy, but tends to be amassed and sheltered in tax havens with a negative effect on the tax bases of the home economy.

And finally:

In 1896, Democratic Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan made reference to trickle-down theory in his famous "Cross of Gold" speech:

"There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it."