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An Insidious Metaphor [1]

['Disinterested Spectator', 'View Profile', 'Miles Estrelle', 'A Pagan In Arizona', 'News Corpse', 'Chitown Kev', 'Commander Ogg']

Date: 2026-05-03  

I just have to get this off my chest. It is a minor point, but the irritation has been building up for some time now, and I can contain my exasperation no longer. I was watching “Alex Witt Reports,” where she introduced Jenna Arnold, a Democratic strategist.

Arnold began by distinguishing between trickle-down economics and trickle-up economics. As she explained it, trickle down economics is the Republican economic theory that advocates giving money to the rich or to big corporations. As for trickle-up economics, she said it was about the social fabric, which I found to be a strange way of putting it. But what I really want to focus on is her use of the term “trickle-up.”

When I was a child, back in the 1950s, my father explained to me that Republicans believed in trickle-down economics. The idea was that by giving money to rich people and big corporations through tax cuts and other favorable legislation, that money would be spent and work its way through the rest of the economy, down to the working class and even to the poor. On the other hand, he said that Democrats believe in percolate-up or bubble-up economics. In this case, the theory is that by giving money to the poor and the working class, they would spend that money, which would eventually work its way up to the rich and to big corporations.

These were good metaphors because they were based on expressions that made sense when used literally: water trickles down and bubbles move up. They were standard in discussions of economics for decades.

Early in the 1990s, I was watching CNBC, and I heard Larry Kudlow use the term “trickle-up.” I thought to myself, “That’s clever. Nothing ever trickles up in the literal sense, so using this bad metaphor to refer to the Democratic theory of economics sends the subliminal message that it won’t work.”

Much to my chagrin, I began hearing Democrats using the term “trickle-up,” oblivious to the trick that had been played on them. If Democrats had started referring to the Republican theory as bubble-down economics, people like Kudlow and Republican politicians generally would never have fallen for it.

I suppose I should be grateful that Jenna Arnold referred to herself as a Democratic strategist and not a Democrat strategist.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/3/800032436/community/the/

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