Here, courtesy of the latest British Social Attitudes survey (published last year) is the answer:
What is notable is that whilst overwhelming numbers agree that “the income gap is too large”, and have consistently said so over the last 20 and more years, two of the possible routes to closing the gap have consistently fallen in popularity, namely using taxes or benefits.
Instead, it is policies such as providing better educational opportunities for the least well off (pupil premium anyone?) which best fit what the public says it wants although, as other evidence shows, the case for education needs to be made and can’t just be assumed by default.
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Paul Walter
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2 Comments
It seems quite logical that many people do not equate raising benefits with the income equalisation. which they would support Most people think that most other people should work for a living – so raising ‘benefits’ which are equated in most minds with those not working (including those who should be), are not attractive to them. Similarly, a lot of people see that “any tax on the rich is also likely to tax me”. They also do not trust the government to only tax for what is needed. You only have to look at Prescott’s redundant billion pound Fire centres to see why.
Two relatively technical points. When the economy is in trouble and everyone knows there is a tight squeeze on public spending, a proposal to spend more on anything is likely to fall flat unless it can be presented strongly as contributing to recovery. While benefits increases actually would do a lot to improve retail performance (as one can be pretty sure nearly all the money would be spent), this point isn’t obvious. So I’m not surprised benefits spending is getting more unpopular, even leaving aside the impact of media campaigns.
As for government redistributing income, the graph shows that the idea became less popular fairly steadily for a long time but has been gaining gradually in popularity from 2004. I think here one needs to remember that people often like the idea of action on something but not specific proposals for action, and “government redistributing income” SOUNDS Big Brotherish – more Big Brotherish than “increasing the amount of income tax paid by rich people and reducing the amount paid by low-income people”, for example.