Viewing equality as a loss: How highlighting policy costs and benefits influences attitudes

Abstract

As economic and political inequality has increased in recent decades, scholars and policymakers have turned their attention to the American public’s reaction and response to this phenomenon. While most opinion polls demonstrate Americans general dislike of both economic and political inequality, there have been few implementations of policy that would reverse the trend of rising economic inequality or the outsized role that the wealthy have over policy. Moreover, redistributive tax policies put to direct vote at the state level have generally not fared well. Under what conditions might Americans be more likely to support policy that increases political equality by reducing unequal influence? Why might Americans vote against or oppose redistributive tax policies even though they object to rising economic inequality? We conduct two survey experiments highlighting costs and benefits of inequality reducing policies. Using data from the CCES and Amazon Mechanical Turk, we find that respondents can shift their support for inequality reducing policy in response to costs yet rarely change opinions when exposed to potential benefits. Our findings suggest individuals can be swayed more by messages highlighting the costliness of redistributive tax policy rather than the potential benefits, suggesting loss aversion may be one explanation for why specific redistributive tax policies can be rejected.