After decades of a soaring wealth gap, the time has come to reconsider trickle-down economics.
A struggling working class undermines the entire economy and breeds instability, but a thriving workforce fuels prosperity and strengthens resiliency.
Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks owner, hit the nail on the head during a somewhat recent video-conference interview with Trevor Noah.
“In the past, a lot of people would talk about trickle-down economics. I think one of the lessons we’re gonna learn from all this," he said, referring to the pandemic's dire economic impact, "is that it’s time for trickle-up economics. We’re only as strong as the base layer of all our employees, all those people who struggle and get paid hour by hour, and don’t know how many hours they’re going to get. If we don’t take care of them, there is no economy. We’re learning that very quickly now.”
That’s coming from a successful and wealthy billionaire owner of a major league basketball team, not the stereotypical trope of a lazy do-nothing socialist hippie with his hands out expecting free everything.
And he's absolutely right — the working class is the foundation of the economy. The stronger the former, the more resilient the latter.
It really doesn't matter how extravagantly opulent a building looks on the surface; if the foundation starts to crack, crumble and cave in, the rest will inevitably become compromised and potentially collapse.
If the super wealthy were just slightly less rich as a result of fairer taxation, they'd still be the wealthiest people on earth, and the economy would remain strong and resilient.
But if workers' pay remains largely stagnant and white collar salaries scantly grow when compared with the astronomical gains made by the top percentile, along the way leaving tens of millions of people unable to afford relatively minor unforeseen financial duress, never mind something like the pandemic, and the whole system risks coming apart at the seams.
We’ve seen much ado about so-called billionaire philanthropy these days.
Guys like Bezos “donating” conveniently tax deductible contributions that amount, as a percentage of their overall wealth, to the average person chipping a few bucks into a cause.
Giving some credit where due, guys like Gates and Buffett contribute far more of their overall net worth than the rest. Most just graciously “donate” from the bottomless benevolence of their altruistic little hearts a generous fraction of their obscene fortunes. Some, pretty well none at all.
That’s the equivalent of the average person walking right past a Salvation Army charity drive, or maybe throwing a buck or two into the collection bin.
Nobody would applaud someone for putting $2 into a panhandler’s hat. Why should we celebrate a billionaire for “sacrificing” an all but statistically insignificant fraction of their fortune is beyond me — it’s basically free publicity and grandstanding. Even buying that much press would cost astronomically more. And it wouldn't come with a tax receipt.
With few other exceptions like Cuban, the number of wealthy people who were calling to reopen the economy and have people going back to work are also sending a loud message we should not ignore.
Their wealth is largely built on the backs of those they lobby so hard against to prevent from earning better wages and improved living conditions.
So why should we depend on their philanthropy, which merely serves to shape the world to further their own visions, when we could just tax them and democratically decide how to allocate the funds and plan for our collective future.