He is right -- you need innovation to create things and then competition to bring prices down, but then arrives at some strange conclusions and inconsistencies. (All the while sounding like he is on crack.)

He makes a case for government giving money to entrepreneurs. Isn't that the "partnership system" that we have now? The mix of giving "public" money to "private" entrepreneurs?

His "solutions" require omniscient central planning to know who to give money to.

It's kind of sad the level of audience he is addressing his ideas to.
MTV meets pop-econ.

Basically he is advocating, like in the other video, a form of crony capitalism here. And the "problem" is that we don't have enough of it. So we should be giving more money to cronies because it doesn't matter if their "pizzas" get bigger, their "success" will "trickle down" to the rest of us and everyone will have a bigger pizza even if it's nowhere near as big as that of the wealthy entrepreneurs. A dog chasing its tail.

It's a weird sort of crony capitalism, though, because you give money to everyone and then one or two of those will build successful businesses and employ everyone else who didn't do as much with the money that was given to them. That's a kind of circular and it's not realistic to think that a couple of entrepreneurs will make up for all the money "given" to everyone else, and the resulting inflation and the myriad of problems therein.

I think he is trying to appeal to both left and right wingers, but it seems rather incoherent, a fact he may be trying to disguise with the fast pace and choppy editing, i.e., a video version of "fast-tlking" (i.e., swindling) to prevent any real and careful analysis of what he says.

I think there's more useful information in the videos this guy produces, but alas, they're not as "zany" as these...

Couldn't agree more. I'm so exasperated by the corruption that has pervaded and affected absolutely everything with power in the western world, and it's trickled down from the very very top.

If we as a species are able to survive past this tricky time period, i think history will look back on this era as very, very dark days indeed, on par with medieval nobility living the high-life whilst the paupers die in the streets.

The politicians, the empowered (the "nobility" if you like) are living in luxury, selling off public assets to their friends, changing laws to suit their benefactors, and doing everything they can to keep that as the status quo. Meanwhile, the elderly and infirm are literally freezing and starving to death in council funded houses because they had their home reposessed due to the having to pay exorbitant bills so that the people who run the energy companies can get a 3 million pound bonus that year.

I wish i was exaggerating. It's fucking real, and no one around me seems to care, and i am so confused and scared by that fact that i don't know what to do about it anymore.

And the problem is largely mitigate by the price reduction in the goods the workers use to manufacture, but now are selling in retail. The bag of chips that used to cost $20 now cost $2, so even if their wages aren't the same, the buying power is better.

The real trick is distribution of the savings realized in the production line. If the company maintains the same price and volume of sales while cutting their staff, then it's the corporation making all the money. If the corporation though is forced to drive down their costs, then that is the republican's much beloved trickle down in action. In practice, both consumers and corporations end up pocketing a portion of the savings most of the time. The more competitive the market is, the better the consumers general make out.

yeah, it'll trickle down, through the IV drip you'll need because you broke your health on the cheap unhealthy diet you could barely afford with the salary from your underpaid, overworked jobs (should you be lucky to have them).

No wait, you won't be able to afford the IV drip either.

I noticed the same thing when I started browsing reddit a while ago. Some sifters definitely use it as a source, but like dag said:Popular videos start showing up on alot of sites and eventually trickle down to other sites. Doesn't necessarily mean the videos were found on reddit.

Besides, I applaud all the sifters, who obviously put a lot of time and effort into supplying this site with content. I think it's understandable that some might have their go-to sites for new videos and don't fancy scouring the depths of the web in order to discover something before everyone else.

Wow, I just watched that video on here and I didn't even see the trickle down system piss arch!

Thanks for pointing it our FOX! That was fucking awesome and so true, LOL!!

Class War is being waged. We need to turn the tides!

Poor Bob, punching stuff into google doesn't qualify as "research"

But let's give you the benefit of the doubt. Hrm, I wonder why THE BOTTOM 50 pay so little. Hrm...maybe it's because they're in THE BOTTOM 50 and don't have as much to give?

SHOCK!!

If only we had a strong middle class to even things out a bit. Congratulations Bob, you're demonstrating the point of the video. The Rich get taxed more, because they can afford it. When you have such a large disparity in incomes such as we have now. flat taxes don't fucking work dumbass. It would be nice if they did, but reality just doesn't work that way.

The bottom 50 pay little or no tax because there is really no point in taxing them more. a higher percentage of a small amount is still a small amount silly. Meanwhile you have the top 1 percent. You can take over 90 percent of their entire wealth and they'd still be extremely wealthy. No one's even asking for that much in taxes. The amount extra they are being asked to pay is paltry. They spend many multiple times more than that on political campaigns so they can continue to keep their taxes low. Imagine if that money actually did something more than just buy fucking ugly billboards and lawn signs and commercials.

We don't live in a world of 3 classes anymore. lower/middle/upper. It's more like lower/middle/upper/VERY upper/OBSCENELY upper.

When your upper class is poor compared to the obscenely wealthy. you've got a problem. Money must flow for an economy to work. Money doesn't flow when it's being hoarded at the top. Trickle down economics might actually work if money actually trickled down. Problem is, it doesn't. It stays at the top.

You really should have just watched the video bob, then I wouldn't have to repeat it for you. We all know you have comprehension problems, but still.

I agree completely. Robert Reich is an intelligent and experienced economist, so he probably does understand the economy pretty well. Most of us do not understand it so well, so we latch onto the ideas of people whom we already agree with or whose framing of the issues pricks the right chemicals in our brains. Personally, trickle down sounds like rubbish to me, while giving the working class more money to spend sounds like common sense, but I couldn't hold my own against an expert who disagrees with me.

I don't know if it's a problem that most Americans don't understand economics, but if it is, this video isn't fixing it. 8 talking points that only sound good to people who already agree with them won't elevate the debate.

People, people, people. Walmart is not the REASON the entire civilised world is finding itself in this situation - walmart is a symptom of the problem.

Walmart is an organisation motivated by profit just like any other.

I heard energy companies posting record profits year in and year out before the recession. There's people at the upper ends of those kinds of companies taking wages, bonuses, pensions and god-knows-what that some people couldn't make in 10 years. They don't deserve it, they don't work 10 times harder then the next person down, but there is a culture of taking what you can.

People don't need that kind of wealth, they just want it. Now, in times of hardship, energy companies are demanding more money for their services because they are no longer making the profit they used to. Instead of relying on the wealth that they have amassed during times of good, they rely on us to give them more.

So they cut a load of jobs to maximise their profits, but now the people they fired can't afford their energy bills. And this is going on all over the place - it isn't just the energy companies, it's also walmart with whatever schemes they've got. It's the oil companies and the politicians with whatever schemes they've got.

And all these schemes intermix, people losing jobs, people unable to afford this here and there because we've stagnated our money, there was no trickle down wealth, it's stagnated so much that there's not enough available anymore to share between the people that need it.

So now the government starts giving out handouts to the elderly or unemployed - £300 for your winter heating bill. But that's a huge amount of money so we need to raise taxes - which is a solution to nothing but puts the problem further ahead and maybe you can work harder later to make up for it.

Meanwhile, half the jobs that are getting taxed are now moved abroad because production is cheaper there. So entire markets of jobs no longer exist, we lost all of our car manufacturers, coal mines (it's cheaper from china), etc. which amounts to millions of jobs, and there's not a lot left to tax. What's the solution now? Which country do we bail out with borrowed money that is earning interest? If the untold billions in profit was returned to the customers back when times were good, we wouldn't be in this situation. But instead it went towards making let's say 30 individual people a lot richer.

Do you see where i'm going with this? It's a culture of greed, and each point down the line there is just enough intentional maneuverability for people to take more than you deserve and/or need; you either are in the clique, in the power scheme, taking cash - or you're not and you're holding up the facade. This isn't what a society is meant to be - it's meant to be a group of people working for their own common benefit because when we don't we all suffer and no one is happy.

This model has a short life-cycle; the eventual result is a few people having a lot of little bits of green paper that don't mean anything because they've forced everyone into abject poverty.

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in."
It doesn't get any simpler than that. Until these old men start planting some trees and giving a LOT back, we will stagnate and you don't want to learn this implied lesson the hard way.

>> ^MonkeySpank:

I wholeheartedly agree with Lewis that you cannot talk about the economy in 2 mins when color commentary on a football foul can last 10 minutes. Just how much attention span do the American people have? How much can we trust them with?


In England under medieval Catholic rule you would be tortured to death for merely OWNING a copy of the Bible in English rather than Latin. They still use Latin in law and other 'Elite' interests. Having the general public follow what's going on has NEVER been on the menu.

US Corporate 'news' is just the latest iteration for keeping people running around in circles while the money flows in to the same type of families (in the Uk actually the SAME FAMILIES!).

But, you know, there's always 'Trickle Down'... or sorry, now its 'Wealth Creators'.. or, wait, lets check FOX for the latest spin..

Unless Darken is signing my paycheck, I answer however I damned well please. And my side business selling straw men, well, I didn't build that, Obama did.

Many on that list are Obama 'accomplishments' only for leftists.


Ears didn't end anything in Iraq, it was already happening when he took office.

He had nothing to do with Moammar and would support whoever came out on top.

The stimulus, particularly the bank bailouts, did nothing except put us in greater debt.

The Chevy Volt is a failure.

Government takeover of healthcare?...I only wish ALL the new taxes Obamacare will hit us with would happen at once, so the oblivious can experience the rotten deal and betrayal of Constitution.

FDA regulating tobacco? Another step backwards from ending Drug Prohibition.

The two UNqualified affirmative action judges added to Supreme Court.

Billions lost to green jobs scams/putting the kibosh on the Keystone pipeline.

...and so forth.

Obama running on his record? Go right ahead. It's why he's where he's at today.


>> ^VoodooV:

>> ^quantumushroom:
An "enraged" Maddow doesn't bother me in the slightest, nor is her blather worth commenting on.
It's just nice to see the left dick-punched with their own tactics, the righty version of lib lies like "trickle-down" and "tax cuts for the rich" (and calling everyone a racist).
You all think Obama has a record worth running on? Let him know. Cause even he don't believe it.
"Economist Edward Lazear has cut through all of Barack Obama's claims about "creating jobs" with one plain and inescapable fact — "there hasn't been one day during the entire Obama presidency when as many Americans were working as on the day President Bush left office." Whatever number of jobs were created during the Obama administration, more have been lost."
>> ^DarkenRahl:
Do you EVER respond to the actual video and/or discussion? You must have a side business selling straw men.
>> ^quantumushroom:
The FORMER big three networks were all liberally-biased for decades (and are still in denial about it).
It's a miracle there are as many righties as there are, with leftists controlling government schools and hollywood.
The internet has saved this nation from the former "fourth estate" who betrayed and murdered real journalism to stump for taxocrats.
There's something wrong when FOX holds one point of view but ALL THE OTHER networks parrot the same line of socialist claptrap.
Oh, I almost forgot. Man-made global warming--or even plain global warming, continues to be a sham.
And fk castro.
THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE RIGHT HAS SPOKEN!



So the answer to @DarkenRahl 's question is...no.
It cracks me up that the right thinks Obama isn't or can't run on his record. He's been running on his record since day one. The right continues to pretend to live in an alternate universe. I know you listen to fox news and they're demonstrably mis-informing people on a regular basis, but you've either missed or willfully ignored his many accomplishments
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ma
gazine/march_april_2012/features/obamas_top_50_accomplishments035755.php

>> ^quantumushroom:

An "enraged" Maddow doesn't bother me in the slightest, nor is her blather worth commenting on.
It's just nice to see the left dick-punched with their own tactics, the righty version of lib lies like "trickle-down" and "tax cuts for the rich" (and calling everyone a racist).
You all think Obama has a record worth running on? Let him know. Cause even he don't believe it.
"Economist Edward Lazear has cut through all of Barack Obama's claims about "creating jobs" with one plain and inescapable fact — "there hasn't been one day during the entire Obama presidency when as many Americans were working as on the day President Bush left office." Whatever number of jobs were created during the Obama administration, more have been lost."
>> ^DarkenRahl:
Do you EVER respond to the actual video and/or discussion? You must have a side business selling straw men.
>> ^quantumushroom:
The FORMER big three networks were all liberally-biased for decades (and are still in denial about it).
It's a miracle there are as many righties as there are, with leftists controlling government schools and hollywood.
The internet has saved this nation from the former "fourth estate" who betrayed and murdered real journalism to stump for taxocrats.
There's something wrong when FOX holds one point of view but ALL THE OTHER networks parrot the same line of socialist claptrap.
Oh, I almost forgot. Man-made global warming--or even plain global warming, continues to be a sham.
And fk castro.
THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE RIGHT HAS SPOKEN!




So the answer to @DarkenRahl 's question is...no.

It cracks me up that the right thinks Obama isn't or can't run on his record. He's been running on his record since day one. The right continues to pretend to live in an alternate universe. I know you listen to fox news and they're demonstrably mis-informing people on a regular basis, but you've either missed or willfully ignored his many accomplishments

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_2012/features/obamas_top_50_accomplishments035755.php

Gross!
>> ^MonkeySpank:
. . . trickle-down my ass!

I also, when you don't tax them enough and allow loopholes, they just park their money in The Caymans & Switzerland; trickle-down my ass!

>> ^manadren:

The fact is that Reagan sold them all on this idea of supply side economics. That if you lower taxes on the rich, they will invest that money in business, which in turn creates jobs. There is a certain logic to this, but the truth off the matter is that supply don't mean shit if you don't have demand. No business is going to hire more widget makers if no one is buying widgets. Demand comes from the bottom. People with less money spend a larger proportion of it.