I'm not dancing around it. Trickle down economics works just fine if the rich choose to apply their tax savings to the little guy instead of to themselves.
There's a difference between something not working because it's theoretically flawed and that same something not working because the participants make sub-optimal alternative choices. Trickle down economics has worked on the global level. The rich have increased the earnings and standard of living of plenty of developing nations by putting the means of production in those places. They are undercutting the American worker but enriching the global one.
To simplify this: Trickle down economics says that if you give Panamaican a dollar, it will benefit the little guy (ScottE)...so long as Pan spends some of that dollar on things the little guy needs. That works just fine as long as I buy in. But I could spend that dollar on things that a different little guy (ScottQ) needs instead. That doesn't mean trickle down economics doesn't work. It worked for ScottQ. I, Panamaican, have received exactly the benefit that I was promised. And the little guy received the benefit. The failure is that you, ScottE, believed that you were the little guy who was going to reap the benefit when it was really ScottQ.
You think countries like China, India, Brazil, etc. got better because of their internal economic policies? Nope. They got better because the tax savings of the U.S. rich were invested in capital projects that benefited those economies and allowed the U.S. rich to keep a larger share.
The GOP didn't outright lie to working class whites. Working class whites never considered the possibility that they weren't the short term beneficiaries of these programs. Now, the GOP is outright lying. It is a significant but subtle difference.