Trickle Down Economics is Misunderstood and Straw-Manned

[TomC]

Of course there was higher growth in the post-war period. You had several years of pent-up technological growth to exploit and there were also years where we could export the bad jobs. Neither of these factors has anything to do with the economic policies of the era.

WTF? For the years after WWII, the US was one of the few industrialized countries that did not have to rebuild its infrastructure. So, the US could and did dominate export markets for a couple of decades simply based on the fact that it could produce goods and services that were needed to rebuild.

This^^^^
Plus, we introduced a ton of socialism to our economic system.

It was Great While it Lasted.
Tom

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think there is an alternative to letting the largest metro areas continue getting overcrowded. We really do not need to let those economies fail. We can probably save many of them with targeted education reforms. I had to leave the area where I grew up because the failure of that economy caused me such serious devastation, but by the time I got loose from that situation, my life and my mental health were already in tatters. Personally, I am of the opinion that it's cruel to abandon people in those areas that might not always be to blame for their issues.

The economy has failed because there isn't the population density to support many high-skill jobs.

To some extent this can now be overcome by remote work. I have been a basically remote worker since the late 80s, but back then I often had to go into the office when I needed to deal with a machine. Now I don't do anything about hardware maintenance and virtually everything else can be done with TeamViewer. I do have some hundreds of dollars with of hardware that sees very rare use and if I were in the office I would probably go snag one from production to meet the occasional need, but that's nothing compared to the costs of driving to work. (Even if work weren't now two states away.)

The area where I came from was in the midst of a total social collapse, and it was awful. We were having driveby shootings in a town that had barely over one thousand people. I don't know what went wrong. It made me very sad.

I already explained what happened--emigration.