Forget Trickle-Down Economics. Let's Discuss Trickle-Up Problems.

Something is trickling and it's not what people think it is.

Photo by Jacek Smoter on Unsplash

By now, we all are aware that “trickle down economics” doesn’t work. It literally just makes the rich, richer and the poor, poorer. Despite all this, the corrupt politicians in office keep on trying to make things trickle down to us poor folks.

The thing is, we’re aware that it hasn’t worked. What most people have noticed is that the problems of America’s former poor now started to affect the middle class, rather than everything going better.

I am not a fan of seeing wealth trickle upward. Speaking as someone who has observed this for a while, I noticed something else that’s been trickling that same direction: problems.

Many of the problems that people associated with bad neighborhoods have become fairly widespread since 2000.

I grew up in an area of New Jersey that’s fairly wealthy. The school systems were (and still are) decent. And I started to notice something eroding shortly after I got out of middle school. It was subtle at first, but then it became more and more noticeable the more I went out and spoke to others.

• More and more students were unable to read or do math well, even in good schools. Today, a large portion of the United States is dealing with a literacy crisis. Our nation also ranks poorly when compared to other countries’ schools in STEM.

• A culture where teachers were literally unable to do their jobs started to blossom. Admins stopped caring about education quality or discipline, primarily because they were petrified of being beaten up or sued by angry snowplow parents.

• The low-key hopeless, aimless attitudes I would later see in rough neighborhoods started to show up in middle class groups. Hanging out in Newark, I met a lot of teens and young adults who kind of just quietly accepted that they’d die young, in poverty, doing crime or nothing at all. I’m starting to see that same disaffected, depressed stare among many other people.

• School shootings and violence became commonplace. Once again, this used to be something that only happened in “gang-infested” schools and neighborhoods. Yet, today, we see people going bonkers on planes and even in luxury buildings.

• Poor mental health is now the norm. This isn’t just a school thing. It’s an everywhere thing.

• Corruption among law enforcement is now fairly common, if not the norm. Maybe it’s just my naivete, but I remember there was a point where a lot of people used to join the force to make a difference in a good way. Nowadays, most people fear the police—even in wealthy communities.

• Many businesses that would have thrived no longer work. This is because their target demographics no longer can afford those items.

• The infrastructure in almost every neighborhood is starting to crack and crumble. Even wealthy neighborhoods are starting to suffer as a result of the federal crackdowns. The fact that climate change is upon us and we’re still dealing with superstorms like they’re freakish random events is insane.

Much of the decline we’re seeing in life quality also deals with the slow erosion of families and communities—something also previously only seen in low-income, lower-end groups of society.

Why is this happening?

Hubris. That’s the short answer. The long answer is that the wealthy seemed to have forgotten one of the most important things about life: we’re all connected. I’m not even talking about it as a “woo woo” thing, either.

Literally, we as humans are all connected—even if it does not seem that way at first glance. Because we’re all connected, there’s no way for one group to keep harming another group without there being a blowback.

Connected via the Net

For example, let’s take the whole “incel” movement. The incel movement started off as the “loser” caste of America—the ones that were usually only a one-off in every school. The net connected them to one another, creating an echo chamber that encouraged increasingly violent rhetoric.

Right-wing groups saw them and lured them into their web, making extremist soldiers that launch terrorist attacks on random people. Nowadays, incel attacks have started to claim the lives of very wealthy individuals as well as innocent children.

In the past, incels were somewhat forced by society to keep interacting with people until they eventually found their groups and their social skills. This would eventually facilitate them in finding partners.

Our society started to get more isolated and cut off those opportunities for them, which means they increasingly turned to the net. And now, here we are.

Connected via the World

Let’s take another example. Right now, a bunch of billionaires and robber barons are guzzling resources via AI, dangerous food collection methods, and fossil fuels. While us little people try to do our best, it’s not enough. We’d have to go after the big companies and governments doing this.

Well, climate change is here.

People are starting to see the effects in blistering heat, food shortages, and yes, the flood that happened in Texas. No amount of money and wealth can protect the robber barons from climate change.

Don’t believe me? Well, the owner of the Chiefs just lost his daughter in the Texas floods. Had the wealthy stopped trying to cut basic functions and stopped trying to elect corrupt crooks, that little girl would still be here.

Connected via Money

Now, let’s talk about the money aspect. You need money in order to survive in this world, that much is very true. What we don’t really talk about is what happens when we need that money and what happens when money starts to wreck things.

This is a major issue that we’re seeing now with the radicalization of people as well as the isolation of family units. Radicalized people who are voting against the interests of the common good keep shrugging, saying, “That could never happen to me! I have money!”

So, what happens when people desperate for money start targeting you? A lot of people are going to find that out the hard way: there’s always a bigger predator, but there’s not always going to be a bigger helper. The best example of this in recent months? The international community and the genocides happening on a global scale.

Few people are as generous as the people who know how bad poverty, war, and strife gets. When you stop helping those who understand the suffering that poverty can bring, you end up chipping away at your own safety net.

Want to make your own life better? Maybe do this instead.

One of the things that many people keep ignoring is that social problems trickle upward—and that being divided on these things only makes things way worse for everyone involved. That’s why so many GOP policies seem to hurt the very people voting for them.

The longer negative policies like this stay in place, both in a national and global sense, the worse off we’ll all be. The only way people will learn to avoid trickle-up problems is to let them sit and stew in the ruins caused by trickle-down economics.

Some folks are too selfish to see it until they have a fall from grace that they can’t get back from. Then, and only then, will they see the truth behind how connected we all really are.

Low cut catsuit FTW.