So do we look to the old remedies now, too? Since the rich are already using the same play book.
One of the arguments put forward by the Robber Barons for their continued riches was that if the wealthy weren’t protected in their wealth, they wouldn’t create jobs for laborers, and that with their spending benefits would not trickle down to the working poor.
Cleveland wasn’t buying it: “He mocks the people who proposes that the Government shall protect the rich and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor,” he told Congress bluntly. Trickle-down economics was, he said, “a glittering delusion.”
He complained about how agents of the wealthy were writing appropriation bills themselves, giving themselves more and more of the government’s money and protections. It had become an open secret that the very wealthy had brought under their control Congress itself.
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