rising tide

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the idea that broad-based economic growth or prosperity benefits everyone, including those at the bottom of the economic scale, just as a rising tide lifts all boats in a harbour; associated with the phrase a rising tide lifts all boats used in various forms by John F. Kennedy, the metaphor has been both celebrated as a description of inclusive growth and criticised as a cover for trickle-down economic assumptions that ignore how growth's benefits are actually distributed; in development economics, the rising tide metaphor is contested by evidence that growth frequently coexists with increasing inequality, suggesting that the tide lifts yachts much higher than dinghies