Democrats have spent nearly 30 years criticizing Reaganomics — the idea that prosperity will percolate through a dynamic and growing economy, the so-called “trickle-down” economics.

Now they have developed their own alternative, which, though I have seen no official mention of it, I shall call Obama-nomics, or “trickle-up poverty.”

The basic premise here appears to be that, if you can successfully spread unemployment and dependence among the poorest of us, eventually consumer spending will decline, businesses will fail, banks will stop lending, and the economy will implode, leaving only politicians and bureaucrats employed, their salaries paid with the money they print.

It is difficult to explain the past 18 months any other way.

The second 2,000-plus-page bill that nobody has actually read is now law — the finance reform bill. Like the first, the health care bill, it calls for hundreds of to-be-written regulations to be created by thousands of to-be-hired bureaucrats.

It will be years before the administration and effects of these laws can possibly be sorted out, and that presupposes that they can be sorted out at all and that they will not be amended further.

Meanwhile, the cost of doing business will go up as paperwork, fees, health care costs and uncertainty increase, the present reluctance to hire will continue, and the burden of subsidizing a permanently unemployed underclass will fall on increasingly pressed taxpayers.

Asset values will decline along with the economy, and, before you know it, poverty, or at least decreasing prosperity, will be nipping at the heels of everyone but the elected and appointed elites and their super-rich campaign contributors, whose wealth will come from government contracts and tax credits. A lot of conservatives would call this outcome socialism, but they really should take a closer look at the definition of feudalism.

Meanwhile, the stimulus money has trickled away into limbo, moving each of us several thousand dollars closer to that magic poverty line. Fannie and Freddie remain unreformed, squeezing down housing values even as they pile up liabilities to be added to our debt.

The president’s bipartisan, officially powerless, but well-named deficit commission, whose co-chairmen have clearly said that we are on a catastrophic course, is being ignored as much as possible by anyone within hearing distance. “Wait until after the election,” they say. Which election?

It’s a good thing Reaganomics has been discredited. This is all so much better.

The counterintuitively liberal ultra-rich — the Bill Gateses, Warren Buffets and George Soroses — seem to be fine with trickle-up poverty. After all, there is precious little chance it will reach them.

Some are busy setting up massive charitable foundations aimed at solving the world’s problems. Others spend freely to elect liberal politicians. One might wonder why, if their hopes lie with government solutions, they don’t simply give their billions to the treasury, but perhaps such a question would require a thoughtful answer.

Thoughtfulness is one quality notably missing among most of our leaders, except the aforementioned deficit commission, whose members feel free to think because they are not running for anything, and whose advice will probably be ignored for the same reason. It is also notably absent from much of the electorate, who are either too busy trying to hang on to worry about why they are having such a hard time, or are enjoying the downward spiral of those wealthier than they.

This is all very shortsighted, of course, but shortsightedness has become as American as apple pie. Dig in; the next course will likely be humble pie.

Fred Wolferman lives in Southern Pines. Contact him by e-mail at fwolferman@sbcglobal.net.