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Comment by cltsang | Hacker News Reader

So are you challenging trickle down economics? That's debatable.

I believe at least at the early stage capitalism trickle down economics works. However, without proper checks and balance system, corruption brought by power and wealth does stop the trickle down effect.

Therefore in China where corruption is an accepted norm, it's doomed to fail. That was not originally planned though.

Maybe that's also why recently the CCP has been trying so hard to abolish religions, to keep the people's moral standard low.

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>Maybe that's also why recently the CCP has been trying so hard to abolish religions, to keep the people's moral standard low.

Is there any evidence that religion actually increases the 'moral standards'?

This paper[1] suggests not:

> Religious and nonreligious participants did not differ in the likelihood or quality of committed moral and immoral acts.

[1] Hofmann W. et al. (2014), Morality in everyday life, Science. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25214626

> I believe at least at the early stage capitalism trickle down economics works.

What is the basis of your belief?

I hope you understand that there is no thing in economics called "trickle down economics" or "trickle-down theory". It was term invented by Will Rogers as a joke to mock tax reduction policies that benefit the rich. Conservative politicians and pundits adopted this non-existent theory meant to mock them and magically people started to believe that it's a real theory that exists.

Only evidence of tax cuts helping comes from tax cuts for the poor who spend the money and don't invest, thus increasing the economic activity. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/701424 Trickle down has no evidence or theory to support it.

There is related real concept called supply-side economics, but it's also widely discredited by economists, including those who worked for Reagan like Mankiw. I think only handful of economists support it today.

If the western economies were truly trickle down, the bucket at the top would be empty by now. However, the source of the trickle has become more sealed over time, and thus the inequality gap grows.

Seems you are one of the few who understands what I'm trying to say. Over time greed and corruption take over.

I live in Hong Kong, which is the most extreme example of this.

And I've also witnessed how this whole process is accelerated in China, since greed and corruption are more prevalent.

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