Chapter 7: Evaluating, Deconstructing, and Re-Making Sticky Economic Metaphors: Welcoming the Death of Trickle-Down Economics

This chapter argues that metaphorical language can be used to humanize or dehumanize those who have the least among us in society. The trickledown economics metaphor fosters a kind of public discourse in which those impoverished by supply-side economic policies are viewed with contempt. In contrast, the affluent, whom these policies have further enriched, are lauded. The metaphorical language that misleads people from understanding the impacts of this ideology and the policies they have inspired have played an essential role in this narrative. The metaphor not only obfuscates the actions of the affluent and those in power who support their continued enrichment but is deleterious to the social fabric which binds us. As Simon Sinek (2017) points out, an environment in which leaders continue to enrich themselves while failing to protect those they lead fosters a selfishly atomized culture in which empathy cannot thrive. In this way, it is vital to displace this misleading metaphor for ones that more accurately identify how inequality is a product of an ideology of greed.