Olivier Jacques présentera l’avancement de ses recherches sur le soutien populaire en faveur de l’augmentation des taxes pour les plus riches.

Abstract:

Support for additional public spending is widespread in advanced industrial democracies. However, voters might want something for nothing: higher spending paid for by another group. For many voters, high-income citizens remain the preferred outgroup on which to shift the tax burden. Indeed, survey responses show that a majority of respondents think taxes on the rich are too low, but almost nobody thinks that taxes on the middle class are too low. This is possibly because most voters perceive themselves to be in the middle class, even if they are considerably richer than average. This study aims to identify which voters are willing to pay higher taxes themselves to fund additional spending and ask whether willingness to pay covary with preferences for different types of spending. The study test if anti-tax voters are more or less likely than pro-spending voters to exhibit a something for nothing preference, i.e. wanting lower taxes but refusing cuts to spending. To do so, I use the ISSP 2016 survey on the “role of government”.I find that among self-perceived middle-class voters, preferences for much more public spending are correlated with a higher likelihood of thinking that taxes on middle incomes are too high. This something for nothing preference is more likely for voters who want more short-term social consumption than for those preferring additional long-term oriented investments. In contrast, I find that anti-tax voters form coherent preferences and tend to favour lower public spending. I discuss the consequences of these public perceptions for the politics of redistribution.

Organisé par la Chaire de recherche en études électorales et la Chaire de recherche du Canada en démocratie électorale.