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Comment by consp | Hacker News Reader

I will have to mention that this varies all over, especially the bit older generation (not exclusively though) also has some weird quirks language wise. So while they might speak and understand the English language quite well the are some parts missing. As an example I like to mention the phrasing of Bolkenstein (a Dutch National/EU politician) of economic handouts to people as "Golden showers". So while proficiency might be high, it's not always ... perfect.

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Even among native speakers, there are often inter-generational shifts: to my father’s generation (1939) “gay” meant “festive, joyous” rather than a sexual preference; my mother used the term “glory hole” to mean “a cupboard used for storage”[0]; and her mother used “Irish” as an insult, and lived just long enough for “wireless” to start to refer to WiFi instead of longwave radio.

[0] admittedly she was starting to develop signs of Alzheimer’s at the point she called it that around me, but that was a legitimate use of the phrase when she was young.

To be fair, we in the UK often talk about the government giving us a golden shower as well. We do phrase it "slightly" differently though :-/

America calls it “trickle down”, but the principles the same

I guess if you mean "money is a small amount of liquid" then the analogy is fair? Otherwise the terms are very different -- handouts are not called "trickle down" in the US. The principle is not the same, it is literally the opposite.

"Trickle down" in the US is a term used to disparage the idea that a strong economy benefits the poor even in the absence of explicit redistribution.

I for one don't see the problem in this particular case. To say that giving everyone money is like a golden shower, is an apt simile in my opinion.

In the off chance this is not a joke: in colloquial English this means they are pissing on you (golden being the color of urine).

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