Ideology, Party, and Opinions of Taxes on the Rich and Middle Class in the United States: Evidence from the 2016 General Social Survey

This paper examines attitudes toward taxes on the rich and middle class in the United States with emphasis on the impacts of political ideology and party identification. Using the 2016 General Social Survey, we estimate bivariate ordered probit models for a full cross-sectional sample, and subsamples stratified by party. Results suggest that proposals to reduce income and wealth inequalities and/or fund large federal expenditure increases by raising taxes on the rich will have difficulty in gaining the political traction necessary for success. Any proposal to raise taxes on both the rich and middle class has almost no chance of passage. Findings also indicate that party affiliation moderates ideological impacts on opinions of taxes on the rich and middle class, in some cases substantially.