Re: Trickle Down Economics

Envision a lush and spongy mountainous region representing the rich, a large body of water and surrounding land below the mountain representing the middle class and a somewhat arid valley lying below the lake which is the poor. Most of the rainfall comes from water taken out of the lake, though some comes from the lush mountain and a tiny amount from the valley. The more equally the rain falls the better all three regions do. But if you divert rainfall to the mountain it soaks most of it up and less trickles down to replace the lost water in the lake and so the lake begins to dry up, just as the already arid valley does. Divert too much to the valley and the lake also dries up. The mountain becomes perhaps a bit less lush but continues to flourish. Now, if you take some of the rainfall to the valley and also irrigate the valley and make it productive, it also creates rain which is returned to all three areas. The key is making the lesser area productive and not taking too much of your rain for either the mountain or the valley.

As I gave your analogy more thought, I found more flaws with it.  For your analogy to be more realistic, you would have to introduce a god (government) that takes the rainfall from the top of the mountain and redistributes it to other areas.  The money isn't falling out of the sky like rain.  You know where it comes from.  What is really happening is that the rainfall is being collected in the form of clouds (government) and is becoming larger than a hurricane because we are feeding it.