Neither do trickle-up economics. The need for government services in general comes from the resources we use and purchase. Decisions to expand government typically come from forces that begin at the checkout lanes and are collated and amplified by corporations to tell politicians to invade some country or another, or to build a new department to ‘protect national interests’.

Rather than externalizing all of those costs off to ‘the rich’, it would be better to put the actual cost of purchases at the decision point (sales taxes). Yes, they are ‘regressive’ if your version of ‘progress’ is monetary and market-based. If your idea of progress is to teach people to be useful to their own place and their children’s futures, then anything that keeps them from using money is progressive.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer because the poor work for them to buy their crappy stuff.