Dem leadership and apparatus doesn't have to denounce Trickle Down because the Pope says it's bad. It's because Trickle-Down is bad for us, and attacking it is how Democrats will get turnout and win elections.
Pope Francis denounces ‘trickle-down’ economics
"In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world," the pope wrote. "This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting."
[my emphasis]
The Republicans, with Media's aid, and Democratic agreement and passivity, have succeeded in turning the false religion of greed into the
de facto State Religion. Today, as a result, so many face ruin, hunger, and destruction of their hope that it is a sign of cowardice or stupidity to leave the idol unchallenged.
How could things possibly get better, when our economic policies, and remedies, even our very discourse, kowtow to the false doctrines of Republican faith?
A faith with four unquestioned articles:
Trickle-Down. The proven false premise that by allowing the rich to get richer, all society will benefit. It hasn't and we've been doing Trickle-Down for a generation now.
There's a corollary to Trickle Upon which is Austerity. This is the doctrine that if you squeeze enough out of the poorest members of society -- and btw, that includes you, even if you've made a fortune in the market this year, see where you are later -- those nickels and dimes all flow up eventually so it can be in a place, one day, where it may Trickle Down.
Free Trade. There's no such things as Free Trade. Nor its 'benefits.' What experience proves is that foreign imports get cheaper, but because of joblessness and wage suppression, Americans can't afford the new 'low' price.
Free Trade's twisted offspring, Globalization, has resulted in a race to the bottom for laborers wherever they live. Even Chinese workers who saw their wages rise (though still miserable by Western standards), are now seeing companies move to someplace even cheaper. There's a permanent competition set up between all laborers everywhere.
The plus side of this, at least for the Worshipers of Mammon (those who value wealth and worldly things above all else), is they don't have to raise their boots so high to keep it in our face forever.
Americans are reassured, though, that Jobs will get better when, as the President has stated repeatedly, we compete in the global marketplace. I don't recall, have never seen actually, any leading politician of our Party saying 'when we can get wages down to where we beat out slave labor, child labor, and poverty-wage labor, the jobs will come back.' As, obviously, that's what's needed to compete. It might take a decade to drive the wages down so low here, but... one has to aim for something, after all.
This kind of thinking has been going on for at least 20 years, maybe longer.
It clearly hasn't worked. All it's done is put us, poorer, under Corporate and Banker's boots.
Deregulation. We've been deregulating banking and corporados since Reagan. What we've learned is that if foxes guard the henhouse, there's soon no point in having a henhouse. Three decades-plus has seen our food safety, banking system, pharmaceutical safety -- damn near anything you can name that's been deregulated -- more risky and more prone to corruption.
Privatization. For the most part we end up paying three or ten times as much to get a worse job done, plus extra-added corruption. This has been going on for more than thirty years and has failed spectacularly to deliver the promised 'benefits of competition.'
So where's the Democratic Leadership on this? How is it even possible that a Party which claims in its very name to be for the People has not performed the desperately-needed exorcism of this all-devouring evil our nation suffers?
When a person charged with the spiritual guidance of a massive, and largely conservative, body can figure out basic arithmetic and economics -- and here's the important part: dare to speak about it in plain words -- shouldn't all those ever-so-pragamatic politicians be able to work out the bleeding obvious?
Let's hear the Democratic Party say loud and clear: "Republican Economics has failed you and failed this nation" in plain words.
Let's hear the mockery of the Republican false religion.
Let's talk about the massive pain and damage inflicted on the American people through Republican philosophies. After all, the everyday people know they are a paycheck or two from being homeless, or hungry, or shattered. Don't all those political strategists the Dem Party pays millions too have any idea of what it is voters are looking for?
We'll have More Democrats to the extent we have Better Democrats. Better Democrats will make a full-on assault on Trickle-Down. And offer alternatives which work for the voters. Shouldn't cost tens of millions to figure that out, eh?
* * * * * * * * * *
Maybe a list would be good. "This and that Democratic office-holder has spoken out against Republican Trickle-Down." It would definitely be one way to see exactly how many more better Democrats we need.
Anybody got one to name?