1. El punto de inflexión histórico en la década de 1980.
Los testimonios coinciden en señalar la presidencia de Ronald Reagan como el inicio de una trayectoria ascendente en la brecha de riqueza que persiste hasta la actualidad.
- Coincidentally, income inequality exploded in 1980, the exact time when reagan signed his trickle-down economics bill into law.
- It started long before 2017. Ronald reagan brought us trickle-down economics in the 1980s. Wealth inequality has soared since then.
- When reagan was elected in 1980, the uss gini coefficient was 34.7. Not great, but not terrible. In 1993, it was 40.4. In 2023, it was 41.8.
2. El desmantelamiento de la clase media y los sindicatos.
Las políticas de "union-busting" y la reducción de protecciones laborales son citadas como herramientas deliberadas para transferir la riqueza hacia las élites corporativas.
- Reaganomics, aka. Trickle-down economics effectively nuked the middle class and created the current wealth inequality situation as it stands.
- Reagan destroyed the middle class by waging war on unions and reducing taxes on the rich in the name of trickle down economics.
- Due to reagan- beginning in the early 1980s, productivity and wage growth decoupled. Workers produced more, but the gains flowed upward.
3. La drástica reducción de la carga fiscal para los más ricos.
Se destaca la transformación del sistema tributario, pasando de tasas marginales altas a recortes masivos que favorecieron la acumulación extrema de capital.
- Reaganomics slashed top tax rates from 70 to 28, deregulated industries, and pushed trickle-down economics.
- Reagan is ground zero for income inequality and all government, income taxes, and social safety nets are bad. I had a front row seat to the decline of working middle classes.
- The rich actually want to get richer. But the poor dont want to get poorer. So who is to blame for the wealth inequality?
4. Consecuencias sociales: De la precariedad al populismo.
El aumento de la inseguridad financiera y la erosión del contrato social se vinculan directamente con la inestabilidad política y el surgimiento de movimientos radicales.
- Reaganism destroyed the middle class and fostered the wild income inequality that made trumpism attractive to millions.
- The burden of financial insecurity creates crime, desperation, suffering, mental, physical illness. Greed is a plague on humanity.
- Extreme levels of wealth inequality lead to social instability, right -wing populism and really dangerous domestic internal politics.
5. El mito del "derrame" y la realidad del "succionado".
Crítica a la teoría económica que prometía prosperidad generalizada, pero que en la práctica resultó en una concentración de recursos sin precedentes.
- Trickle-down economics is really hoover-up profits to richest people amidst cost-cutting, doing more with less, db to dc pensions, downright-sizing, etc.
- If trickle-down economics actually worked, wealth inequality wouldnt be at record highs, and working-class wages would have grown alongside corporate profits.
- The only thing thats trickled down is misery for the non-wealthy.