Stefanie Stantcheva, a MIT economist, has written about why people vote against redistributive policies from which they might benefit. She argues that over and above their knowledge about proposed policies, people's sense of fairness may predict support for policies that could reduce inequalities.
I just came across her summary of the chapter she contributed to a volume about the government's role in combating inequality, especially now as extreme economic inequality poses a threat to democracy as the extremely wealthy leverage power over the political system.
As she writes about the trust that many people have in a fair economic system, Stantcheva makes clear that there is a lot of misinformation about redistributive economic policies: People overestimate the number of people that would be affected by estate taxes, overestimate the number of immigrants and are misinformed about who the are, aren't clear what it might be like for a family like theirs to live at the poverty line. The tax system is vague to many voters.
But, even when researchers both inform and question people about their support for policies that would redistribute highly concentrated wealth, support for more progressive policies remains tepid.
In part, she writes of high distrust in government, and therefore in government remedies for inequality.
But also: As long as people sustain belief in equal opportunity, inequalities in current circumstances are less a concern:
It does appear to be the case that people are willing to tolerate high levels of inequality if they think that opportunities are relatively equally distributed and that everyone has a chance at climbing the social ladder.
And further, that belief in opportunity can defy evidence:
Furthermore, inside the United States, there is widespread geographical variation in perceptions of national intergenerational mobility, and these perceptions correlate negatively with the actual state levels of mobility. The South, for instance, has the lowest actual rates of intergenerational mobility in the United States, yet respondents there paradoxically have the most optimistic perceptions.
She reminds readers that Steinbeck once wrote that "Americans do not support that much redistribution because the working poor perceive themselves as 'temporarily embarrassed.' " Notions of personal dignity, value, and relative status get entangled in the hope that we can just work our way out of struggles and in the belief we retain measures of control over our circumstances.
Few students in K-12 schooling or in college learn about economic inequalities or the policies that might address them. Research like Stantcheva's is just one measure of the consequences of that negligence as students instead hear persistent messaging that doing well is school will be rewarded with economic security and dignity.
And students hear this in both under-resourced and in wealthy schools.
I've ordered the book in which Stantcheva's chapter is published and likely will post more about it soon.
