DO PEOPLE WANT SOMETHING FOR NOTHING: PUBLIC OPINION ON TAXES AND GOVERNMENT SPENDING

Abstract

THE consume public's government readiness programs to demand is and unconsume government programs s understandably greater than its willingness to pay for them. Recognizing this, public officials typically downplay the connection between taxing and spending and cast about for sources of revenue that are palatable that is, politically harmless even if inequitable or inefficient. From the politician's perspective, the ideal is one that is neither seen nor felt, only paid (Meltsner, 1974). Indeed, recent research shows that it is the reliance on visible taxes to finance government services rather than the sheer magnitude of the burden or its rate of growth that best explains the intensity of tax revolts in the affluent democracies (Wilensky, 1976). Thus it is not surprising that in California a sharp and seemingly inexorable rise in the highly visible property tax, particularly during a time of growing inflationary pressure on real disposable income, caused a popular outcry that culminated in the overwhelming victory of Proposition 13. The success of the JarvisGann initiative quickly spawned a variety of imitative proposals in other states and thrust the issue of limiting government spending onto the top of the nation's political agenda. No one disputes that the passage of Proposition 13 expressed a collective preference for lower taxes. Such certainty dissolves, however, when one attempts to define the voters' intentions in more precise terms. For example, is the tax revolt aimed at the amount of taxes paid, the form of taxation, or the distribution of the burden among different social classes? Are anti-tax and anti-spending sentiments likely to endure, or will they recede as the nation's troubled economic circumstances improve? Indeed, how closely linked are opposition to the current rate of taxation and attitudes about gov-