It isn’t often one mixes metaphors between Peanuts with John Kenneth Galbraith, but let me try, as I love this phrasing (emphasis mine):
Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy — what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.
— Galbraith, “Recession Economics,” New York Review of Books (4 Feb 1982)
Cutting taxes on the rich and saying it will benefit everyone “downstream” is a scam. There might be some marginal benefit, but the rich will extract as much “nutrition” from those “oats” as they can before “passing” them on.
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I've always heard d that oats were cheaper after they had been processed by the horse. (I've also heard that this concept explains [beer name here].
A more serious and interesting take can be found here. google.com – The Laffer Curve Is 40 Years Old; Long Live The Laffer Curve
+Lorne Lehrer It depends on the "efficiency" of the animal in question. Elephants process about 10% of the vegetable matter they consume, which is why their dung is so highly valued as a fuel source in Africa (and for generating smoke to ward off tsetse flies).
The rich are more efficient at extraction than elephants.
+Dave Hill Regressive tax modeled after animal "efficiency". This seems like a subplot from a dystopian or New Wave SF novel.
From now on that's my response to trickle down.
Horse-and-sparrow is the best description I've heard of it. It explains clearly what the lower classes receive.
+Travis Bird That's why I love the phrase.