The curious title originated with my first visit to the Cabela’s store in Sydney Nebraska while “trickle-down economics” was being used to criticize President Reagan. I was impressed with the massive sporting goods store with huge aquariums full of trophy-sized fish, mounted game animals from around the world, and the extensive amount of sporting merchandise. However, the most impressive part of the visit was the employees. Everyone I spoke with presented themselves as genuinely happy to be at work; they could have taught classes in customer relations. It occurred to me that this business that was founded and expanded to an impressive size could be used to demonstrate the power of “trickle down economics.”

President Reagan actually never used the term, but that didn’t stop the opposing politicians from using  to infer wealthy people selfishly only allow a few scraps of money to make their way into the pockets of average people. (The “Occupy” movement uses the one percent versus the ninety-nine percent to make the same argument.)

The term “trickle-down economics” had its origin in the “Cross of Gold” speech given by Democratic Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan in 1896. He said, “There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below.” Wikipedia says they first known use of “trickle-down theory” was in 1954. Lyndon Johnson said after leaving the Presidency “Republicans… (are) so busy operating the trickle-down theory, giving the biggest corporations the biggest break that the whole thing goes to hell in a hand basket.”

It strikes me that trickle-down economics isn’t such a bad thing if the Cabela’s story is an example. The stores across the country (with one in Canada) were possible because two businessmen continued to invest as their successful stores brought in profits. I’m grateful that the government didn’t take the money used for those investments in taxes and I’m guessing Cabela’s employees feel the same.

The history of Cabela’s is interesting and impressive. The business began with one sale of a dozen hand-tied flies for a dollar by Dick Cabela in 1961. One could say sales picked up quite a bit after that first sale. The kitchen table operation moved to the basement of the father’s furniture store in 1964. The business now has thirty-five retail stores, extensive catalog sales, and over 3000 well paid employees. The stock of the company is publically traded, so anyone can participate in the company’s quest for solid business performance and profits.

The company web site says employees have health, dental, and prescription drug insurance, life insurance, accidental death and disability insurance, a 401k retirement plan, an employee stock purchase plan, and a college savings plan. Sydney’s unemployment rate is reported to be about a third of the national rate.

I was fascinated to think that that the term “trickle-down economics” might be applied to a business built by two entrepreneurial brothers. I came to realize that the Cabela’s story is really a story of the power of free enterprise and capitalism. It would probably be political suicide for a politician to claim that capitalism is unfair because it only allows prosperity to “leak through to those below.”  It is safer politically to use the demeaning term “trickle-down economics” or to continually tell the country the people who have succeeded at building wealth aren’t paying their fair share of taxes.