GREGORY A. HUBER

Makers and Takers: How We (Don't) Tax the Poor Reduces Support for Taxing and Redistribution

Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/99971350080

Abstract
The United States tax system exempts 47% of people from paying federal income taxes. Because the median voter still pays income taxes, however, this difference in tax burden may undercut support for more expansive redistribution. We argue people think about taxation as a public goods problem in which everyone is required to contribute something. To test this hypothesis, we designed a pair of incentivized experiments in which taxing and spending policies are randomly paired. Supporting our expectations, we find that Americans (1) believe that policies that tax the poor are fairer and (2) are more likely to choose policies that tax the poor holding distributive outcomes constant. Further, in two rhetoric experiments we find respondents are less supportive of politicians who exempt the poor from paying taxes to finance expanded social programs. A more progressive tax in which the poor pay nothing may therefore paradoxically undercut total redistribution.

Bio 
Greg's research focuses on American Politics, and is motivated by a desire to understand how the interactions among the mass public and elites, political institutions, and policies explain important outcomes. While the particular set of topics that he writes about has evolved over time, he remains centrally interested in how individuals think about the government, how these attitudes are shaped by government action and political campaigns, and how those beliefs in turn shape citizens' political activities and government policy. He draws on multiple methodologies in my research, including field interviews, formal modeling, survey and administrative records analysis, and field-, lab-, and quasi-experiments.