• EhForumUser@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    That was just a line to keep the proles subservient and waiting.

    Huh? The trickle down line comes from comedian Will Rogers who was making a joke about how President Hoover, who was an engineer, was accustomed to water trickling down, but that he didn’t realize money trickles up.

    It was a line to serve the exact opposite – to tell the ‘proles’ that the economic plan was fundamentally flawed.

    • teuast@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      yeah, but it was repurposed for that. “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” also has its origins in a saying referring to something that is impossible, but was later repurposed into having the opposite connotation for most people.

      • jonne@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        Also when conservatives quote MLK about ‘judging people by the content of their character’, and nothing else.

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Thanks. I learned something. I grew up hearing it discussed seriously in the 1980s, by which time I’m not sure everyone remembered the critical origin you identify. As I remember it, during the Reagan/Thatcher years many people treated the matter of whether and how the wealth would trickle down as a real live question.