What Forms of Redistribution Do Americans Want? Understanding Preferences for Policy Benefit-Cost Tradeoffs

Political scientists agree that most Americans are “operationally liberal.” However, economic preferences have traditionally been measured as opinions on public spending, independent from the “costs” of public policies. In reality, redistributive economic policies often impose costs on some actors while delivering benefits to others. When a policy’s costs and benefits are both apparent, what types of redistribution do Americans prefer? This paper’s novel survey evidence shows that preferences for policy benefits are indeed sensitive to which subgroups would bear the policy’s costs (and vice versa). American majorities do support a wide range of redistributive economic policy packages—as long as the wealthy are footing the bill or the costs are hidden. When the size of the group facing the policy cost (e.g., tax) increases, overall support declines. Preference differences between Republicans of varying economic statuses are large, while divisions within the Democratic coalition are subtler but still clear on certain policies. Overall, this paper shows that measuring preferences for a policy’s costs (e.g., taxation) are crucial to truly understanding voters’ holistic economic policy demands. Further, the lack of enactment by political elites of the forms of redistribution consistently supported by the public casts research on democratic representation in new light.