Americans Want To Tax Billionaires But Not Get Rid Of Them

Most Americans are on board with the belief that
the government should work to reduce the wealth
gap,
By Ariel Edwards-Levy
| Updated 7 hours ago
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03/04/2019 05:45 PM
ET
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has focused on
issues of economic inequality, calling the existence
of billionaires a “policy failure.” (ASSOCIATED
PRESS)
Addressing economic inequality has become a
focal point of the 2020 Democratic presidential
contest . Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is
proposing an annual wealth tax on households with
a net worth over $50 million, and Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.) is backing an increase to the federal
estate tax.
Some progressive Democrats have gone further,
questioning whether billionaires should even exist
― among them, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-
N.Y.) who posited that every billionaire is a “policy
failure.”
Most Americans are on board with the belief that
the government should work to reduce the wealth
gap, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll found , although
fewer consider the existence of billionaires a policy
failure.
Just over half those surveyed, 52 percent, said the
government does too much for wealthy people,
with a quarter saying it does about the right amount
and just 8 percent that it does too little. A similar
majority, 54 percent, said the government should
pursue policies to reduce the gap between the
wealthy and the less well-off, with 26 percent
opposed and the rest unsure.
The issue of income inequality has taken on new
relevance, thanks to the continued unpopularity of
President Donald Trump’s tax law , which has polled
slightly underwater in most recent surveys.
“It used to be that making taxes more progressive
was considered the crazy left wing,” Morris Pearl,
the chair of Patriotic Millionaires, which supports
taxing the wealthy, told PBS NewsHour . “Now that
we have some very progressive plans in the left
wing, restoring things to where they were two years
ago [before the Republican tax cuts] seems a
middle of the road plan.”
Americans, the survey found, take a generally dim
view of the uber-wealthy ― just 22 percent said
they have more admiration than distrust for
billionaires, while 43 percent had more distrust
than admiration (Bloomberg, which asked the
question in 2017, also found distrust winning out ).
In the HuffPost/YouGov poll, 45 percent said that
the government should work to reduce the share of
wealth held by billionaires in the country — versus
33 percent who said it should not. But there’s less
support for attempting to stamp out the nation’s
billionaires altogether. Just 20 percent said they
support the idea that billionaires represent a failure
of policy, and 45 percent were opposed.
Views on every question diverged starkly along
political lines. More than 80 percent of voters who
supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 said the
government does too much for the wealthy and
should try to reduce the gap between the wealthy
and the less well-off, with nearly as many saying
the government should work to reduce the wealth
held by billionaires. They were close to evenly split
on the idea that billionaires represent policy failures.
Only 24 percent of Trump voters said the
government does too much for the wealthy, and 24
percent said it should work to combat wealth
inequality. Just 19 percent said the government
should try to reduce the share of wealth held by
billionaires, and only a tenth said billionaires
represent an inherent problem with the political
system.
The rest of the country, including voters who
supported a third-party candidate in the last
presidential election and those who stayed home,
were generally supportive of efforts to reduce
wealth inequality, though by smaller margins than
Clinton voters.
By comparison, there’s little divide along income
lines. Americans in households making under
$50,000 annually, more than $100,000 annually or
somewhere in between were about equally likely ―
from 51 to 54 percent ― to say the government
does too much to help the wealthy. Across those
income groups, those who said the government
should work to reduce wealth inequality ranged
from 52 to 57 percent; those who said they want to
see fewer billionaires was in a similarly narrow
band of 44 to 48 percent.
Two questions show a little more differentiation.
Those in the lowest income bracket were the least
likely to admire billionaires: Just 15 percent said
they do, compared with 31 percent of people in
higher-earning households. But those in the highest
bracket were the most likely to support the idea
that billionaires represent policy failures: 34
percent said so, compared with 18 percent of lower
earners. Those with lower incomes weren’t more
opposed to the idea but were substantially more
likely to say they were unsure.
As historical polling shows, Americans have long
favored taxing the wealthy . Gallup polls conducted
from 2013 to 2016 suggest a majority also
approve of taxing the rich specifically for the
purpose of redistributing wealth — a shift from
earlier decades. More recently, a number of polled
have shown broad support for Warren’s proposed
wealth tax. But how the ideas are framed
matters. the concept of socialism, for instance,
continues to poll badly.
And redistribution isn’t necessarily at the top of the
public’s to-do list. In a Gallup poll last December,
62 percent of Americans said it was important for
Congress to act on “the distribution of income and
wealth,” ranking it last among a list of a dozen
policy areas. Education, health care and the
economy placed highest.
Use the widget below to further explore the results
of the HuffPost/YouGov survey, using the menu
at the top to select survey questions and the
buttons at the bottom to filter the data by
subgroups:
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000
completed interviews conducted Feb. 25 to 26
among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from
YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the
demographics and other characteristics of the adult
U.S. population.
HuffPost has teamed up with YouGov to conduct
daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this
project and take part in YouGov’s nationally
representative opinion polling. More details on the
polls’ methodology are available here .
Most surveys report a margin of error that
represents some but not all potential survey errors.
YouGov’s reports include a model-based margin of
error, which rests on a specific set of statistical
assumptions about the selected sample rather than
the standard methodology for random probability
sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the
model-based margin of error may also be
inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed
explanation of the model-based margin of error.