Ok , everybody knows trickle down is a made up term to describe an economic theory that ddoesn't exist in real life, but let's leave that aside.
If 'trickle down' doesn't work, why is unemployment so low?
Who's hiring all these people???
Flawed question, on several levels.
"Trickle-down economics" is a theory, an economic proposal, about more wealth in the hands of the wealthy will eventually trickle-down to the rest of society. Said another way, that taxes on businesses and the wealthy should be lower in order to stimulate investment in the short term on the hope that all of society benefits in the long term.
It is not exclusively about unemployment numbers, but rather about all earners benefiting from the highest income earners keeping more of their wealth.
It has been largely disproved as even in our current economic climate unemployment being low we can tell that labor participation is still low, the distance between all the income quintiles continues to grow, and wages for the lower income quintiles are largely flat by trend.
Meaning, the wealthy did get more wealth but it did not trickle down near enough to make the theory plausible. By the numbers the 3rd income quintile (middle) down to the 5th income quintile (lowest) are behind inflation, underwater in relation to the spending power of money year on year, and way behind by every economic measure we can find.
Labor Participation by Trend...
Income Quintile by Trend...
What we are seeing is wages out of sync with productivity, wealth accumulation at the highest getting further away from other income quintiles, less labor participation rate (a good portion due to age,) but also a few other alarming statistics.
* Almost 80% of Americans live "paycheck to paycheck."
* On average Americans are over $100,000 in various forms of debt, on average Americans die with over $60,000 in debt.
* Nearly half of all Americans have no retirement plan or retirement account of any kind.
* Roughly 30% of all Americans have less than $400 in their savings account, another 30% do not have a savings account.
* Less than 15% of Americans have a pension plan at all.
* Over half of the nation cannot afford an emergency $1,000 expense.
* 50-60 years ago over half of the top 10 employers in this nation paid a wage in the 3rd income quintile (middle,) today the majority of the top 10 employers pay a wage at the 5th income quintile (bottom.)
There is no such thing as trickle down economics, and all economic good times means is higher wealth accumulation for the highest earners perhaps impacting the 4th and 3rd income quintiles for a minimal amount of time between recessions. Wealth accumulation at the highest points continues to grow, everyone else is falling behind.