Trickle Up Economics

From Newsflash! Giving tax breaks to the rich doesn't create jobs, it looks like recession time, and more tales of dumb executives by Dean Baker:

Given the economy's dismal performance during the Bush presidency, a candidate who is running on the Bush economic program would have reason to be defensive, but not Sen. McCain. McCain is turning reality on its head, filling the airwaves with commercials saying that Obama's plan to raise taxes on the rich will kill jobs.

It is truly unbelievable that we are having this argument. We only have to go back to the Clinton years to see how the economy performs when tax rates on the rich are at the level proposed by Sen. Obama.

During the eight years of the Clinton administration, the private sector added 15.8 million jobs. By contrast, in the seven years and six months of the Bush administration, when rich people paid the Bush-McCain tax rates, the private sector added just 3.5 million jobs, and it is now losing jobs at the rate of almost 100,000 a month as President Bush prepares for retirement.

Read the rest here.