It's been 30 years...just how long does it take for prosperity to "trickle down"

I always loved the term "trickle down" to describe the supply-side (read: windfalls for the already wealthy) economics that had its birth during the administration of St. Ronald of Reagan. It's so evocative of the wealthy pissing on the teeming masses beneath. Aside from the eight years of prosperity under the last Democratic president, Republican administrations have been marked by fiscal irresponsibility and a raiding of the public treasury and trust by soulless multibillionaires who already have more money than they and their heirs can spend in a hundred lifetimes.

So that anyone still thinks that "Wait...we will shower you with largesse at the appropriate time" is a way to get working (or unemployed) Americans to sit quietly by while the very same finance guys who got what is known as "welfare" when it is given to Americans to help them clothe their kids, keep a roof over their heads, or put food on the table, say that for them to get even more preposterously rich will eventually help them all. It's like that old ad for the online loan company that depicted conventional banks in the form of a loan officer saying "Your approval should be in any day now....any day....any day." So it's ironic that it's now a preposterously wealthy investment bank executive saying "You'll get some of this any day now....":

One of the City's leading figures has suggested that inequality created by bankers' huge salaries is a price worth paying for greater prosperity.

In remarks that will fuel the row around excessive pay, Lord Griffiths, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, said banks should not be ashamed of rewarding their staff.

Speaking to an audience at St Paul's Cathedral in London about morality in the marketplace last night, Griffiths said the British public should "tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all".

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

(h/t)