So afraid of non-Voodoo economics

It wasn't that long ago really that mainstream Republican thought was that trickle-down economics was a joke...W's Daddy famously called it voodoo economics. Weirdly, after Clinton showed an economy can grow with slight tax increases and W showed that the economy can crumble under tax cuts for the wealthy--trickle down is accepted as gospel by a significant number of freepers and surprisingly large number of moderates!

The thing is, trickle down makes sense...but only in a controlled (regulated) market. In a true free market, it simply doesn't make any sense whatsoever. The two basic premises of a free market is that prices are set by supply and demand and that the purpose of the market is to make as much profit as possible.

The biggest fallacy in trickle down is that it assumes lowering the cost to business results in the business ALWAYS chosing to raise the cost back up by hiring more workers or paying them more. Alternately, the business could drop the price it gets to become more competitive. The problem of course is that virtually every business plan insists (often in a corporate charter) on mazimizing profits and distributing those profits to shareholders.

When I hear freepers claim that Obama raising taxes on corporations just means they'll pass the costs on to the consumer, I always ask, "well, how much did prices drop when Bush gave them a big tax cut? Must be nice filling up with $1.29/gallon gas!" The price of goods/services is NOT the flex point (again, any free marketer will tell you that the price is a function of supply and demand--cost is not the primary driver). The flex point is profit. Trickle down makes no sense, especially when combined with free market theory.