If You Trickle Us Do We Not Laugh?

How Capitalism Should Work

By Gary Kroeger

Sept 23, 2026

I’m a capital “C” capitalist. I want a boat, a vacation home, and I want enough money so that I never have to worry about the bills…along with a sports car and a maybe a little bling.

And if my capitalist dreams come true, I won’t change one word of what I’m saying today about the market, regulations and the necessity of containing the corruption that is an inevitable byproduct of an unregulated free market.

Someone said recently that “the liberal economic model has taken over the United States” yet, over the past 45 years the divide between rich and poor has grown to be the largest it’s ever been. The top 10% have increased their holdings by over 250%; the marginal tax rate for the wealthiest Americans has been reduced by nearly 55% since Eisenhower; and Capital Gains have been reduced by 80%.

Who’s winning and who’s losing?

If they were talking about the “neoliberal economic model” (neoliberal economics are not social “liberalism”) they would be right, but they’re not. The liberal model is based on “trickle UP” to create the consumerism that propels capitalism and it has been losing for decades.

The conservative model which is America’s operating system today is predicated on wealth accumulation at the top and insists it trickles down to create prosperity at the bottom. “Neoliberal” economics planted that seed over 40 years ago and it isn’t working. Look around. It isn’t working and it never will.

It is the author of flat working-class wages, income disparity and rising costs crippling the disposable income that propels consumerism and drives the economy.

“When has a poor person ever given you a job?” was a retort from a Republican friend.

Well…I guess the answer is…never.

My jobs have all been given to me by entrepreneurs who risked their money and I have nothing but thanks for them. The point of the question, of course, is to say that we need to protect the “job creators” and give them the incentive to create and grow business so that we can have those jobs. That reminds me of the relationship between Renfield and Dracula; if Renfield worships and protects him, Dracula promises to provide Renfield with an endless supply of blood.  It is without a doubt a sycophantic relationship and it only serves its master.

Incentives? Aren’t they protected and incentivized enough?

As I observe the wealthy class in America it appears that they must have been incentivized pretty well and rewarded by our system. Yet, when I look again at their actual tax to income ratio and then consider who buys the products that created or increased their wealth, it becomes all too clear that a different incentive needs to emerge.

Walmart isn’t a billion-dollar corporation because wealthy people shop there; it is the middle class, the working class that comprise 90% of America and consume the goods and services to create the wealth, who shop there. They are the ones who need to be incentivized and protected for our economic engine to keep running and to prosper.

That’s how Capitalism sustains.

I am part of the dwindling Middle Class, but I am by the measure my father used, a man with the riches of family and friends and I don’t begrudge affluence at all, not one bit. I know how important financial success is to the system and, as I said, I’d love to be more affluent. But if that day comes when I can put a Bayliner in my third garage space, I will say:

“Thank you, America, for providing the opportunity that I was able to capitalize upon. I will gratefully pay my fair share of taxes that our progressive system has asked of me so that our government can work toward an equitable distribution of resources for others; others who fuel the engine that allowed me to prosper. And thank you for creating the programs that can help those who have not been as fortunate.”

The social justice I fight for includes social programs and fundamental access to education and healthcare to give Americans better opportunities to reap the benefits of capitalism and of a free Republic bound to protect the common good.

That isn’t drab, oppressive, communism by any measure. It is a free society with representative government that understands that capitalism, in order to sustain, must create a system for the working class to prosper.

It is trickle UP.

Subscribe to Gary Has Issues on Substack.