Why Americans Don’t Want to Soak the Rich
With income inequality on the rise, you might think there would be increasing support for taxing the rich and giving to the poor, said Neil Irwin. In fact, since the 1970s, “close to the opposite has happened.” As middle-class incomes have stagnated and the wealthy have gotten wealthier, Americans have actually become more skeptical about income redistribution. Our desire to “soak the rich has diminished,” even as top earners have “more wealth available that could, theoretically, be soaked.” Conventional explanations for this “seeming paradox” tend to fall along ideological lines.
For conservatives, it proves that Americans understand that lower taxes spur growth and make “everybody better off.” Liberals, meanwhile, say voters have been hoodwinked by conservative politicians and pundits, who have turned “redistribution” into a “dirty word.” But a pair of new studies suggests that our attitudes are actually much more complex, and that support for higher taxes is largely governed by factors like how long we think someone has been rich and whether we are already receiving government benefits. These insights don’t get us any closer to more coherent tax policies. But it helps explain why the redistribution debate often proves so “messy.”
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