From Wikipedia:
The economist John Kenneth Galbraith noted that "trickle-down economics" had been tried before in the United States in the 1890s under the name "horse and sparrow theory." He wrote, "Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy—what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: 'If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.'" Galbraith claimed that the horse and sparrow theory was partly to blame for the Panic of 1896.[15]
In 1896, Democratic Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan made reference to trickle-down theory in his famous "Cross of Gold" speech:
There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.[16]Proponents of Keynesian economics and related theories often criticize tax rate cuts for the wealthy as being "trickle down," arguing tax cuts directly targeting those with less income would be more economically stimulative. Keynesians generally argue for broad fiscal policiesthat are directed across the entire economy, not toward one specific group.
In the 1992 presidential election, Independent candidate Ross Perot called trickle-down economics "political voodoo."[17]
In New Zealand, Labour Party MP Damien O'Connor has, in the Labour Party campaign launch video for the 2011 general election, called trickle-down economics "the rich pissing on the poor".
A 2012 study by the Tax Justice Network indicates that wealth of the super-rich does not trickle down to improve the economy, but tends to be amassed and sheltered in tax havens with a negative effect on the tax bases of the home economy.[18]
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