Trickle Down?

For over 30 years the theory of trickle-down economics has held sway in some areas of US politics. It ends up with such statements as "We have to give the tax-breaks to the job creators so they create jobs." I keep thinking that there is more than a little BS in this idea.  A few of my reasons:

• One of the Great American Capitalists, Henry Ford would disagree. 
• Or at least his idea that he should pay his workers better so they could buy more products would say so.
• The gap between top and bottom income in the country might disagree.
• The gap has never been wider with a smaller "middle class" than has existed since the "middle class" became a reality. That means the ones at the top- the job creators- are not using their money to create jobs.
• The profit statements of many corporations could disagree.
• As profits keep going up for many big corporations, these profits are not being turned into new jobs. They are going other places, some of which are admittedly important. But the jobs are not being created.

The right-wing economists would come up with all kinds of reasoning why it hasn't happened yet.

• Regulations
• Uncertainty
• Democrats
• Obama

I would argue that if it hasn't happened yet, after 30 plus years, I see no reason why we should continue to believe that it will happen at some unforeseeable place in the uncertain future. 

And no, I am not joking. I fear that trickle-down economics is the joke.

Playing With History

Genealogical research has a certain unreality to it, especially when you discover minor things- or nothing at all. Perhaps that is why family myth is so powerful. It transcends facts, yet reaffirms them. It also shows, I think, the historic problem of record keeping. We have become so intent on making sure we have “the facts” and only “the facts” that we forget that it wasn’t that long ago facts were easily transformed depending on one’s mood.

For example, in looking at old census records I found that I couldn’t find anything about my mother’s parents prior to 1940. None of them, my mother included are easily found in 1930 or earlier. They were alive, of course; but they are like a ghost in the story to me. I searched and they weren’t there in 1930 or 1920 either. Going back to 1910- only a couple of years after arriving in the United States I came across a possible sighting, but the name is different, shortened and the immigration year is different from what I had found somewhere else. That will send me down another rabbit warren on my next exploration.

Now I have to go back to the immigration lists from Ellis Island and see of there might be another sighting of another name at another date. Crossing those waters in the 1900s did more than change location, it changed identity and gave one a whole new history.

But even my American-born grandparents aren’t found easily in 1900 just before they were married, even though they were both in their mid-20s at that point. The 1890 census was lost to a fire. They are there, at age 4 in 1880, though. Facts are not easily held on to. They are slippery and easily lost in the shuffle of time.

So we build our myths on what we know, have overheard, or just feels right. And thus our story is defined.