The show notes for Episode 36 are at http://www.eclectablog.com/2017/06/episode-36-one-trillion-reasons-the-gop-wont-give-up-on-trickle-down-with-special-guest-nick-hanauer.html

When Kansas Republicans who control both State houses were forced to join with the state's Democrats to overturn Governor Sam Brownback's veto of the bill that would roll back his 2012 tax cuts for the rich this week, no one had more right to say "I told you so" than Nick Hanauer.

Hanauer called the unfunded tax breaks "a controlled experiment in trickle-down economics."

Cutting taxes on the wealthy had sent the state into recession and huge budget shortfalls, even as taxes rose on the bottom 20%. And though the top 1% got a tax break larger than the yearly income of a member of the bottom 20%, the state's GDP was lower at the end of 2015 than it was before the cuts went into effect.

You know who agreed that Kansas was "a controlled experiment in trickle-down economics"?

The Ronald McDonald of tax breaks -- Grover Norquist.

“Kansas is the future,” he told an interviewer in 2015. “Kansas is the model.”

Just two years later he's saying:

“If you’re a Republican looking for a model,” he says, “Kansas is not the model.”

Trickle down economics is now as proven a failure as the Iraq War, the Microsoft Zune the Bush's Brothers political acumen but that's not stopping Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and the national GOP from going in for another trickle on the premise that our biggest

“We’ve had it backward for the last 30 years,” Hanauer said in 2012 in a TED talk that made a national still. “Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs."

But Hanauer has been trying to create jobs with his unique brand of anti-inequality politics argued from a massively successful business owner's point of view. He makes the plutocrats case for a $15 an hour minimum wage and expansion of overtime pay from the point of view that both are job creators -- while the employers who chronically underpay forcing taxpayers to subsidize their workforce are the job killers.

Hanauer is a proud progressive who puts his money where his politics are, continually calling for a better Democratic Party that will more eagerly raise his taxes.

We wanted to give him a chance to say "I told you so" and hear his vision for a Democratic party that breaks out of the nasty stream of trickle-down economics.

Nick Hanauer's personal website: NickHanauer.com/

Nick Hanauer on Twitter: @NickHanauer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCvf8E7V1g

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