Matt Yglesias cites some polls that suggest that the public favors higher taxes on the rich:
There’s no polling on specific brackets or exactly who counts as rich that I can find, but surveys are very consistent that for some definition of rich the voters would like to see higher taxes:
- The most recent poll on this I can find is an April 2018 Gallup survey which had 62 percent of respondents saying the wealthy do not pay their fair share in taxes, a number that’s been consistently in the high 50s or low 60s in the 21st century.
- Pew found in 2017 that 60 percent of the public said it was bothered “a lot” by the fact that rich people don’t pay their fair share.
- A 2017 CBS poll found that 56 percent of voters said wealthy people should pay higher taxes.
By contrast, I can’t find any poll anywhere that supports the Republican position that high-income families’ tax burdens should be reduced.
Conservative web sites do cite such polls:
“What is the maximum percentage of a person’s income that should go to taxes – that is, all taxes, state, federal, and local?” The mean percentage for 2009 was 15.6 percent, up slightly from 14.7 percent in 2007. A plurality of those polled, 42 percent, felt that the maximum income tax rate should be between 10 and 19 percent. In 2007, a whopping 47 percent of those polled said that the maximum income tax rate should be between 10 and 19 percent.
I recall reading polls suggesting that the public prefers a top tax rate of around 25% or 30%, but I cannot find them. (Yglesias’s post was in part a defense of 70% tax rates on the very rich.)
I recently did a post explaining why public opinion polls are not reliable. A good example can be found in an NPR poll that suggests the public favors abolishing the “estate tax”, and favors abolishing the “death tax” by an even greater margin. (Of course these are two names for the same tax.) The same poll shows a slight 43%-42% plurality also favors abolishing taxes on dividends.
The NPR poll suggests that a big majority of the public believes the rich should pay more in taxes (consistent with Yglesias’s claim), but also suggests that most people believe the rich currently pay a lower rate of federal income tax than the middle class, which is crazy. They pay a much higher rate. So it’s not clear that the public believes the rich should pay more than they are currently paying, but it is clear that the public believes the rich should pay more than the extremely low rates of income tax that the public now falsely believes they are paying. As they already do.
Given the public’s views on estate taxes and dividend taxes, it’s odd to read another NPR poll showing that the public believes the tax rate on wealth should be higher than the tax rate on wage income.
Reading all the various poll results leaves me with the impression that the public is woefully ignorant of the entire subject. Many answers seem to contradict previous questions, and others suggest a lack of knowledge of basic facts. The ignorance is so profound that I would not take any of these poll results seriously. Framing effects probably impact some of the responses. In the end, it really doesn’t matter what the public thinks about taxes; what matters is how the politicians they elect vote when tax issues come up in Congress.
READER COMMENTS
Mark Z
Jan 9 2019 at 5:04pm
Matthew Yglesias has truly mastered the art of not finding what he isn’t looking for.
Lorenzo from Oz
Jan 9 2019 at 6:24pm
Gold! Mark Z wins the Internetz for today …
Floccina
Jan 9 2019 at 5:28pm
Great post.
Matt Yglesias should be glad that the elites are in control of US government and not the median voter.
Here’s one, people in the policy realm keep telling us that white Americans are fearful that they will soon be a minority (probably not even true) but it turns out that most Americans think whites already are a minority.
TMC
Jan 13 2019 at 9:56am
That’s because that is what you see on TV shows and ads. If you only watched TV you’d think the US is 40% black 50% white and 10% Asian. Also about 25% gay and 50% interracial couples.
Mark Bahner
Jan 9 2019 at 6:36pm
It would be interested in polling that had something like (all numbers just pulled out of the air):
Alex
Jan 9 2019 at 7:53pm
It would seem that the answers to these kind of polls depend on how the question is phrased much more on what is actually asked.
Ted
Jan 9 2019 at 8:06pm
I was actually shocked at how similar the two NPR questions were.
One was:
54 favor
16 oppose
29 don’t know
The second was:
60 favor
15 oppose
26 don’t know
The only difference is that out of 100 people, 3 ‘don’t knows’ and 1 ‘oppose’ changed their answer to a ‘favor.’
But n=~700 for each question, so statistical noise was probably a few points. I honestly wouldn’t conclude anything from the difference.
Also I will note that both questions were very similar, and both explained the tax.
#1:
There is a federal estate tax—that is, a tax on the money people leave when they die. Do you favor or oppose eliminating this tax, or don’t you know enough to say?
#2
There is a federal estate tax that some people call the death tax. This is a tax on the money people leave when they die. Do you favor or oppose eliminating this tax, or don’t you know enough to say?
I am very impressed and happy that they prompted folks with the ‘don’t know enough to say option’. I bet that’s why 25-30% said I don’t know, which felt very high to me.
CZ
Jan 9 2019 at 11:10pm
I generally find polls that ask about direction to be more credible than polls that ask about numbers because people are innumerate.
For example, many folks on the left shared a big poll a few years ago when Americans said their ideal wealth distribution was something like the top 20% gets 30% of all wealth and the bottom 20% gets 10%. This distribution would in reality be absurd and unlikely achievable even in a communist country. It’s more reasonable to believe that the public is innumerate than that they favor communist levels of equality.
Another example are polls of immigration. Polls that ask whether immigration should be decreased show that a significant majority of the public does not want to reduce immigration. At the same time, polls that ask people for an ideal number of immigrants show that most people have an ideal number that is significantly lower than the current number. Yet, still other polls that ask people to estimate the number of immigrants show that most people significantly overestimate how many immigrants we have! The only way to reconcile these three results is to realize that most people are innumerate and put little to no weight on any polls that ask people about numbers.
Thus, in this case I do find the liberal polls about direction more convincing than the conservative ones about numbers. Political events show this too; there was nary a peep when Obama let the Bush tax cuts expire for high earners, but a ferocious resistance when Obama tried to take away tax breaks like the 529 and backdoor Roth that were perceived as benefitting the middle class. I think increasing top marginal rates is politically possible (not necessarily a good idea economically) as long as the Democrats do it in a way that avoids perceived collateral damage on the middle or upper-middle class.
Mark Z
Jan 10 2019 at 4:15am
While it’s true that most people are innumerate, the validity of the directionality of their preferences is undermined by their innumeracy, as desired direction itself depends on where one is. If someone severely underestimates how much rich people pay in taxes or overestimates how many immigrants live in the US, that would I think nullify (or at least cast doubt on) the meaningfulness of their desire to increase the former or decrease the latter. If I’m driving a cab in Illinois and my passenger keeps telling me to go west so he can get to Indiana, someone telling me, “he’s probably just not very good at geography” doesn’t clarify what I should do. It doesn’t suggest to me I should drive west. Nor, of course, that I should drive east toward Indiana. I’d probably just stop and let him out.
Floccina
Jan 10 2019 at 10:18am
Yes, but the problem with the liberal polls about direction is that the people polled think that the rich do not pay much taxes at all. There are often news stories about the rich completely avoiding the income tax because it occasionally happens.
I once saw a story though about a rich guy living off interest and the big news story was that he paid no income tax, zero but he did by owning only municipal bonds which is really just a way to pay income taxes at a slightly lower rate. The municipal bonds earn less interest because they are federal income tax exempt. This was supported to be some sort of scandal but they are just calculating the tax wrong!.
Scott Sumner
Jan 10 2019 at 12:18pm
I’m not at all convinced. We know that people believe the rich pay less in taxes (percentage wise) than the middle class. We know this is completely wrong. Is it really surprising that the same people who wrongly think the rich pay less than the middle class also think the rich should pay more? I can’t imagine anyone thinking it’s appropriate for the rich to pay a lower rate than the middle class. So these poll results tell me nothing of interest.
I favor a top income tax rate of zero, and a top consumption tax rate of 70% or 80%. What does the public think of my view? Hint, they have no idea what I’m even talking about, and would be unable to offer any opinion on the proposal.
Brandon Berg
Jan 9 2019 at 11:14pm
You’re probably thinking of this poll, which you linked in an earlier “There’s no such thing as public opinion” post.
Brandon Berg
Jan 9 2019 at 11:51pm
Here’s your earlier Money Illusion post about this survey.
Kenneth P
Jan 10 2019 at 12:01am
I think public opinion is largely a reflection of current journalism sources they follow. Meanwhile journalists can cherry pick their truths. Warren Buffett makes more than his secretary is a great way to convince people high income people pay less taxes than middle class while leaving out that it is only because he makes his money via long term capital gains and we know nothing about his secretary’s income.
TMC
Jan 13 2019 at 9:59am
Also he owed the IRS a billion they were suing him for.
Parleo
Jan 10 2019 at 4:36am
When you write “Yglesias’s post was in part a defense of 70% tax rates on the very rich.” immediately after a quote that talks of “the maximum percentage of a person’s income that should go to taxes – that is, all taxes, state, federal, and local”, you are yourself framing the information in a way that contributes to the woeful ignorance of the public on the matter of how the income tax works.
Scott Sumner
Jan 10 2019 at 12:27pm
Parleo, You might want to read Yglesias’s entire post before leaving a comment.
Mm
Jan 14 2019 at 7:38am
Not sure reading all of MY’s post is useful since he advocates lying to advance his political agenda…
Thaomas
Jan 10 2019 at 4:50am
As usual the problem is not addressing problems on the margin. The Federal government should surely not be incurring large deficits when the economy is near full employment. Republican Congresses have not been able to identify politically popular expenditures to cut, so it looks like we need to increase taxes on consumption. So which consumption levels do we want to cut by the largest %? I’d argue those who consume the most. Ergo: a progressive consumption tax. I have not done the arithmetic, but I believe that it might have to be well over 50% for the highest level of consumption, especially if we also eliminate taxes on business incomes and wages as we ought.
Parleo
Jan 10 2019 at 6:50am
The consumption to be taxed in this way in the present circumstances should surely be carbon.
Mark Z
Jan 11 2019 at 3:13am
Tax increases aren’t likely to be any more popular than spending cuts, perhaps less so.
I’m sure a token increase in taxes on the rich would be politically viable, maybe even popular, but in order to amount to more than mere symbolism, taxes on the middle class would have to be raised, which is decidedly unpopular. For example, Ocasio-Cortez’s 70% tax rate on income over $10 million would only raise enough money to bridge about 5% of the current budget deficit, even assuming it has no effect on income and there’s total compliance. Even doubling the rates top two federal tax brackets would only cover ~40% of the deficit, again assuming no evasion or negative income effect.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-70-percent-tax-cannot-finance-socialism/
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 11 2019 at 12:49am
Rational ignorance and framing effects certainly play a big role, as you mention. We should not forget cycling either, which may explain part of the inconsistency you mention.
Adam
Jan 14 2019 at 7:41pm
Will there be a forthcoming “Myth of the Rational Taxpayer”?
Comments are closed.