Trickle-down theory: the best way to feed the birds is to give more oats to the horse.

At least that's how I remember.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics

The economist John Kenneth Galbraith noted that "trickle-down economics" had been tried before in the United States in the 1890s under the name "horse and sparrow theory." He wrote, "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.'

no

Although they may be prostrate as well.

Something to the effect that the rich will speak up and say that as soon as more tax breaks and subsidies are offered them, they will be motivated to create jobs for the rest of us, while the rich also say: if you give to the poorer people, everyone knows it only makes them lazy.

He made it sound a whole lot funnier than I do, though.