I believed in the trickle down stuff for a long time. I grew up in a red state so my family and friends were pretty conservative.
The basic concept makes sense as long as you don't look into the facts. Its easy to keep parroting the "Let the job creators keep their money so they can make more jobs" mantra.
Also remember that anyone who doesn't support trickle down economics is a dirty, socialist, Hitler, commie. And that's why these beliefs persist.

1) The rich and powerful still need a limited amount of consent from the masses to do what they want

2) They attack the problem at every level, with dishonest science, saturating discourse with (untrue) messages that benefit them, obfuscation, whatever they can...using a vigorous, experienced, motivated, and well-funded PR machine

3) Any message delived from an authoritarian voice carries a little weight, even when the authority is completely suspect and has been discredited

4) People are morons

(My favorite part of the entire equation is that people who believe the rich are people who fear the government, as if the government somehow has the power to do something in spite of the fact that they have failed to do anything for decades)

also, I believe that capitalism is still the most efficient economic system as long as there are reasonable checks and neither the business side nor the government side accumulates too much power

You can scale "the business side and government side" up and down. Schumpeter thought that government-propped monopolies made life better for everybody (his economic beliefs were one of the pillars of fascism, though this isn't his fault). Of course it's wrong, or is it? China's cellular service is a state monopoly and it's a whole lot better than ours.

Scaled down, small government cannot create big monopolies. von Mises has a valid point in that the great monopolies of the world were all created or propped up by giant governments giving them money and preferential treatment. The East India company, the age of robber barons, IBM... What happens when there are no big government companies in a nation filled with giant multinationals? Predatory capitalism from outside.

We are very much stuck in a vicious loop of power protecting itself and then being torn asunder when things get too bad at the bottom. We're trying desperately not to repeat the same mistakes, but we keep can't seem to help it. This week a Senate bill inched forward that would cut about B off of our food stamp program. During a RECESSION in which millions of people are struggling to apply their work experience to jobs that can't pay their rent. We already know what happens when this is attempted, just look at Prime Minister Cameron's Britain. Why are we doing it then? It's such a paltry sum in comparison to the tens of trillions of American dollars being laundered around the world untaxed, not going to any job creation anywhere, yet its effects will be immediately devastating.

Meant to say "in a world of giant multinationals..."

"Why are we doing it then?"

"WE" aren't doing it. Those who are paid for by the wealthy are doing it under the guise of "being responsible" which impresses those who vote for the corrupt lawmakers the rich employ.

Those who benefit from the system increasing their wealth/power keep skewing the system to give them more wealth/power. The only question is do they do it because they think the system can afford to give them more at the expense of the majority, or do they honestly think the majority deserves less because of some failing that the majority has? They could also just be completely amoral evil fucks like the Koch brothers (who make billions from formaldehyde and use a fraction of said billions to keep formaldehyde out of the EPA's control even though it's a known carcinogen), which is what my cynical side often wants to say.

I've decided to throw my political optimism behind the possibility of a next ice age. Historically, those have pretty much been the sole source of human transcendence.

I think you mean Waterworld�
(starring Kevin Costner)

Red states are exactly as cena_mark describes them when it comes to this. So are elite universities. Wonder why? HMMMMMMMMM.

I really want to see that and I can't find it, but I did find this:

http://crispian-jago.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-venn-diagram-o f-irrational-nonsense.html

and this:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2012/07/29/is-ted-t he-new-oprah/


so it wasn't a completely wasted 45 seconds.

That forbes one takes on a whole different meaning if you have a different opinion of the cultural significance of Oprah than the author does, of course.

TED apparently lifted the ban due to thousands of cries of hypocrisy from their fans, so it is on their site now.

like anything popular, there were once gems and turds, now there are still gems, but there are a lot more turds

I can't think of many TED talks that spend a lot of time spewing citations. They are meant to be little globules of ideas that inspire you to seek out more ideas. It's worked on me pretty well so far.

Also, no amount of well-cited evidence is able to fracture the resolve of partisan hacks, nor does it enlighten the willfully ignorant.

WHOA, don't even joke about enlightening us.
Thank you. Now if you'll excuse me, Iron Man 3 is out.

Yeah, TED talks are basically Jack Handey for the people who made their fortunes in the dot-com bubble.

well, I sure as hell will never pay that much to go to one

the visual medium is not an efficient transmitter of a great deal of information

perhaps you could read his book

This seemed especially thin and poorly argued though. I've never seen one as content-free as this.

Alternet.