On Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 09:36:11PM +0000, Robert J. Chassell wrote: > Hence, the government gets `more bang for the buck' by giving money to > the poor than the rich.
Yes, and if you look at GDP growth, it is greater with trickle up than trickle down. > The counter argument is that a person with only 10000 US dollars > will waste an additional 100 dollars, but a person with a million US > dollars will spend or invest an additional 100 dollars in a manner > that provides more benefit for both the rich and the poor person than > the same money going to the poor person. That sounds like a shaky argument to me. How will the poor person "waste" the $100? What are they likely to spend it on that doesn't help to increase demand? The capital (capacity) utilization in America is lower now than it has been in many years. If we want to grow the GDP more quickly, first we have to get the capacity utilization up so that businesses start investing in more capital and hiring more people, which is what grows the GDP. The way to do that is to generate more demand for products and services. And one way to do that, which has better in the past than trickle down, is to get more money into the hands of the people who will spend it on goods and services -- people who are not rich (as you said, the rich will tend to save additional money unless there are good investments, and there aren't many good investments when capacity utilization is so low). -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
