“We can’t afford more top-down economics. What we need are policies that will grow and strengthen the middle class.” — Barack Obama
That statement from Barack Obama was curious to me since top-down economics, properly understood, is what he believes in the most. He does not believe one hair of bottom-up economics. But now I understand. He doesn’t know the difference. Apparently, a lot of other people are confused as well. I guess these phrases are not descriptive enough to be self-explanatory.
Top-down economics is when the government tries to control every aspect of the economy. Bottom-up is when the people, with their millions of daily economic decisions made in their own self interest, create the economic framework. Top-down economics is the political equivalent of “intelligent design,” a fraudulent theory meant to undermine Darwinian natural selection as the driving force in the creation of life on earth in its many complex forms. Bottom-up economics is what F.A. Hayek called “spontaneous order” and what other economists mean when they refer to emergent economic order, the creation of wealth that explodes outward through the economy for all to partake of with their work and investment and that results from these many individuals and businesses engaging in economic activity. This is called economic growth creating new wealth, something that is woefully missing under the One, Barack Obama.
Top-down economics is when political entrepreneurs raise money through taxation and then do what they call “spreading the wealth” by redistribution. This form of economy always results in economic stagnation because it does not create any new wealth, and in fact destroys existing wealth in the economy by spreading a lot of it to wasteful government social programs with high amounts of leakage into the pockets of crony capitalists and government bureaucrats. The recipients of whatever money is left over after the cronies and bureaucrats take their slice, is not the result of any work or investment on their part beyond simply holding out their hands. In other words, it’s exactly the form of economics Obama prefers. That’s why his statement against top-down economics was odd. He was using the term incorrectly. He thinks it means just the opposite of what it actually means, because the opposite, bottom-up economics, is what he is against.
I didn’t know there was so much misunderstanding of top-down vs. bottom-up until I read this article with that as its title. I’d read the statement attributed to Obama and thought it must have been a misprint. Instead, it’s an actual statement of Obamanomics.
Thought for the day: You know Democrats really love poor people because they create lots of new ones every day.