Popular Acceptance of Inequality due to Brute Luck and Support for Classical Benefit-Based Taxation / Matthew Weinzierl.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weinzierl, Matthew.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w22462.

NBER working paper series no. w22462

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2016.

Summary:

U.S. survey respondents' views on distributive justice are shown to differ in two specific, related ways from what is conventionally assumed in modern optimal tax research. A large share of respondents, and in some cases a large majority, resist the full equalization of inequality due to brute luck that standard analyses would recommend. Related, a similar share prefer a classical benefit-based logic for the assignment of taxes over the conventional logic of diminishing marginal social welfare. Moreover, these two views are linked: respondents who more strongly resist equalization are more likely to prefer the classical benefit-based principle. Together, these results suggest that a large share of the American public views the allocation of pre-tax incomes as relevant to optimal tax policy and--at least in part--justly deserved unless proven otherwise, judgments that are inconsistent with standard welfarist objectives.

Notes:

Print version record

July 2016.