The theory that the views, values, beliefs, opinions and superstitions of the Super Rich can be made to trickle down to the rest of the populace forcibly. Because money is power, as the divide between the rich and the
poor grows wider (as tax policy becomes less progressive
via policy manipulations), eventually a very small portion of the population holds the vast majority of the wealth. Combined with a
chronic and severe lobbyist problem and systematic removal of sane limitations on political
ad spending, the result is that vast wealth can significantly affect public policy. The concept of Democracy (one person, one
vote) begins to break down as the wealth unbalance becomes extreme. The effect is self-serving: the power of the super wealthy to steer policy grows, as does their wealth, due to their undue influence. The result is that logically-defective memes can trickle down to the population and cause otherwise reasonable people to
vote against their own interests and
even against the most fundamental founding principles of the nation. Refer to
definition of "American Taliban".
Dude A: Why the
fuck would you vote for him? He's promised to pass his Christian beliefs in to law and lower taxes AGAIN on the super rich (which includes him, by the way). Do we really want to teach intelligent design instead of evolution in public schools and create a new class of trillionaires?
Dude B: This is a Christian Nation! More guns! Drill baby drill!
America rules! We're far superior to those
muslim degenerates with all those wacky religious laws. The only thing that would make
America better is banning the teaching of evolution, arming all of our teachers, and defining abortion as murder. Oh, and taxes are illegal. I built that.
Dude A: That's some seriously fucked up
black-belt-level Rupert Murdoch trickle down bullshit. We're not also banning the teaching of trickle down theory, are we?