Erschienen:
Cambridge, Mass: National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2016
Erschienen in:NBER working paper series ; no. w22462
Umfang:
1 Online-Ressource
Sprache:
Englisch
DOI:
10.3386/w22462
Identifikator:
Reproduktionsnotiz:
Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
Entstehung:
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Mode of access: World Wide Web
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Beschreibung:
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