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Comment by pkaye | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't trickle up economics work better? Poor people have more unmet needs and more likely to spend any extra they get into the economy.

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I've been trying unsuccessfully to sell this idea to my cohorts with regards to the stimulus check. My argument is, giving poor people money is a guarantee win for the community, because poor people live paycheck to paycheck and that money will be spent immediately.

No one buys my idea because it's always something like, "I don't trust them", or "why does that lazy guy deserve any money"....

I am not sure how to win that argument.

Win? You're not going to win that argument because it isn't set up for you to win. The argument boils down to "they are undeserving". Good luck convincing someone that the person in question is, in fact, deserving because the goal posts will just get moved. Okay, go with something along the lines of "people shouldn't starve in the streets, deserving or not". And you'll be shocked at what a fellow human being will respond with.

You're basically asking, "in a time of crisis, could we quit being dicks to each other if only for a little bit?" And the answer from many will be a resounding, "nope".

Islam solved this problem a long time ago. It has a built-in "charity tax" called Zakat whereby a portion of people's wealth (as long as they make more than a minimum threshold) is donated to charity each year. The portion depends on what kind of wealth it is (e.g. for gold and silver have a different rate from produce, the former being only 2.5% per Hijri year). This ensures lifting up the poor and stimulating the economy by discouraging people from hoarding wealth, yet, it is not a socialist system because it heavily discourages people from being needy and relying on others. There were many rich and wealthy Muslims across history, and it is not frowned upon one bit.

It is historically established that there was a time, when everyone committed to paying their Zakat, that there were no more poor people left to take it!

That’s effectively what Nick Hanauer has been saying more recently but I believe we are too far gone at this stage.

> I believe we are too far gone at this stage

When irrationality and straight-up lying are so entrenched, you wonder what it would take to shake up the system.

The only thing I see is some major catastrophe, like a meteor strike or something on that scale.

I think we are seeing the slow disintegration of the system as we speak with the pandemic. Or rather, we are seeing an acceleration in the slow disintegration that was already happening. The rise of the populist right all over the world is a troubling sign of things to come.

The people are not content. Look at the BLM protests in the US, they were the largest uprising in American history. They were bigger than the MLK riots. Content people do not riot. Needs are not being met, or at least perceived needs are not being met.

The pandemic should've been enough but... meh.

The US government is very capable of handing out $1200 checks to everyone as we have seen. It is also extremely popular with the people. I mean I guess the only impediment is courageous politicians but that might be a large obstacle.

I wonder if they gave out the $1200 checks every year and funded it by taxing the top brackets, that would cause a large surge in consumer spending (mostly on essentials but also on luxury goods as you go up the income bracket).

I think you inadvertently pointed out the whole problem. The US government will hand out checks in emergencies, funded by debt, but won't actually increase taxes on top brackets in a meaningful way. So you end up with wealth redistribution being a non-starter.

Isn't the answer of this one known since the time of Keynes?

That's basically what pulled the rich countries out of the Great Depression.

There is ongoing and significant debate about exactly that question.

Here are some links from across the spectrum of opinion.

https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/ask_a_scholar_did_the_new_...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/surprising...

https://fee.org/articles/fdrs-folly-how-roosevelt-and-his-ne...

High taxation on wealth and high spending on the poor didn't start with the New Deal (the US lagged here) and didn't end with it.

> Wouldn't trickle up economics work better?

It depends on what you mean by “work better”.

If your goal is to further enrich the capitalist class while building a quasi-religious doctrine that results in failure of the working classes to see progress resulting in popular pressure to even further enrich the capitalist class, no.

If you have a different goal than the people promoting trickle-down theory, then, sure, maybe.

You could think of UBI as "trickle up". The money starts at the bottom, not at the top.

Mind you, I'm not necessarily sold on UBI. But I think this is an interesting way to look at it.

I watched Andrew Yang's proposal on UBI with great interest. Not necessarily for the UBI section on it, which I wasn't sold on at the time, though I have mostly come around on, but more for how he intended to pay for it.

While cutting social security and welfare by the same amount that the UBI that goes out, there would be an even amount there. I didn't realize how much that would cut down the cost off the top. He went into more specifics and I don't want to butcher it, so I'll link it. As he is no longer trying for any government position, I don't feel like I'm stumping for anyone:

https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-faq/

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