What I said that set off the crazies was that there is no such thing as "trickle-down" economics. Supposedly those who believe in trickle-down economics want to give benefits to the rich, on the assumption that these benefits will trickle down to the poor.
As someone who spent the first decade of his career researching, teaching and writing about the history of economic thought, I can say that no economist of the past two centuries had any such theory.
Some of those who denounced me for saying that there was no trickle-down theory cited an article by David Stockman years ago -- as if David Stockman was the last word, and I should forget everything I learned in years of research because David Stockman said otherwise.
What is often confused with a trickle-down theory is supply-side economics, such as that advocated by Arthur Laffer. That theory is that tax cuts can generate more tax revenue for the government because it changes people's behavior, causing more economic activity to take place, leading to more taxable income, as well as a faster growing economy.
It is not hard to find examples of when this happened -- for example, during the Kennedy administration, among other times and places. Whether it will happen in a given set of circumstances is what is controversial, but none of this has anything to do with money trickling down from the rich to the poor. It has to do with the creation of more wealth in the economy as a whole.
