Demand Side Economics

Isn't economics just that - economics? Conservative economics? Liberal economics? Isn't that akin to conservative biology, or liberal physics? I mean the science is the science: supply and demand. cost of goods and services, markets, money supply, profit and loss.

I don't remember a single professor in college telling a class that supply is more important than demand, or vice-verse. In fact balance between the two was the emphasis. When one moved on way, movement in price could be predicted, and movements in both yielded the same ability to predict price. What's with "supply side" economics? I've never heard of "demand side" economics. Not once. Ever. Where are all the talking heads telling us to slash taxes on lower income brackets to unleash the demand latent in the economy and let it all trickle up? Oh wait......we have had that. In the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, when the middle class in the United States grew exponentially we had that. Businesses grew and grew in those 5 decades. Recessions were typically brief. Manufacturing in the United States was foremost in the world. Poverty declined. Living standards here were vastly superior to the rest of the world. Innovation flourished. We invented among other things: radio, television, color television, computers, the internet. Our automotive manufacturers boomed relative to the world. Our media, print and broadcast, developed and reached all demographics with increasing accuracy for advertisers to pass the word - thereby funding further growth in media, and the manufacturing they fed. And everyone - I mean everyone - made money. Everything we could make we also bought, and what we didn't buy, we could sell abroad.

Then in the 1980s we decided that wasn't the right model. I don't know why. I mean, I remember the energy crises in the early, and late 70s. I remember the manufacturing in the far east - especially Japan developing and competing with the opportunity of the same energy crises. Since then we've lowered taxes on upper brackets under the mantra that this "frees money up for innovation." That it will "trickle down." Except it hasn't. The growth since then has been concentrated in the top 20%, and even greater concentration in the top 5%. Where's the trickle? Why did we buy it? Why do we continue to buy it? Why is a return to that labeled "socialist?"

The trickle down is not money you feel.....