The Trickle Down theory

The only way the water trickles down with any significant flow is if it’s pumped down. Otherwise, to shift metaphors slightly, any rising tide lifts only the yachts.

That is why any viable community financial policy simply cannot be laissez-faire, relying on a ‘natural’ trickle down effect. In the first place, it isn’t ‘natural’ because those who have a grip on the money like to keep it that way, and get more if they can (”the less than perfect nature of man”). In the second place, it really doesn’t benefit the poor in the community when the rich get more, because even if the rich do give away some of their largesse, it will not be as much benefit as focussing that money where it is needed.

I am perfectly happy to affirm that the labourer is worthy of his hire. I can possibly be persuaded that someone whose managerial responsibilities are much greater than mine deserves a salary which is a multiple of mine. What I find obscene is when such a person, whose annual salary may be a multiple of what I will earn in a decade, receives a bonus which is itself a multiple of my income, and does so against the background of a significant amount of need and poverty in the community. It’s greed, nothing less, and it is indefensible by any Christian standards.

“That is why any viable…” etc. Society enables what it values. Beyond mere egalitarianism, if one would structure society according to Christ, it will take a change of values And such a change as that is not a matter of economic theory but evangelism. Any lasting positive change of society must deal with the heart of darkness that the norm of this fallen world. Otherwise, far from any broad benefit, any economic structure will only produce the same failed result.