Latest / Trumponomics / Americans Get Lots of Government Money, And They Still Hate Washington

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Americans Get Lots of Government Money, And They Still Hate Washington · Trumponomics

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Americans seem more suspicious of and hostile toward government than ever,
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  Speaker 1: and that's a sentiment that transcends left and right, Blue
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  Speaker 1: states and read So, why then, is government thriving? Why
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  Speaker 1: does government assistants play an ever greater role in the
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  Speaker 1: lives of many people even in an era of Republican
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  Speaker 1: control of Congress, the White House, and a conservative leaning
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  Speaker 1: Supreme Court. Welcome to Benchmark, a show about the global economy.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Daniel Moss, a columnist at The Bloomberg Opinion in
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  Speaker 1: New York, and I'm Scott Landman and economics editor with
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  Speaker 1: Bloomberg News Washington. Antipathy toward an overbearing state has been
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  Speaker 1: part of American public discourse into the Republic's earliest days.
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  Speaker 1: But something new is happening. Not only is the reach
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  Speaker 1: of federal programs getting deeper, hostility toward them is increasing
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  Speaker 1: at a much greater rate in the parts of the
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  Speaker 1: country that have become the most reliably conservative, places like Kentucky.
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  Speaker 1: It's a paradox studied by Suzanne Mettler, a professor at
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  Speaker 1: Cornell University in New York. She's the author of a
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  Speaker 1: new book called The Government Citizen Disconnect, and she joins
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  Speaker 1: us this week. Professor, thanks so much for being here,
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  Speaker 1: delayed to be with you. I'm glad you used the
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  Speaker 1: word disconnect in the title of your book, because I'm
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  Speaker 1: stumped what's going on here. These two things seem at
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  Speaker 1: odds with each other. Well, indeed they do, and it's
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  Speaker 1: a paradox um. So we have this disconnect where over
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  Speaker 1: the past many decades, Americans attitudes about governor ment have
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  Speaker 1: become considerably worse than they were in the nineteen fifties
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  Speaker 1: and sixties. And yet at the same time, people rely
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  Speaker 1: upon government social policies more than ever for their healthcare,
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  Speaker 1: there to pay for college education, for retirement security, and
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  Speaker 1: all kinds of economic security. And so that's what I
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  Speaker 1: wanted to dig into to try to make sense of.
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  Speaker 1: Suzanne Dan mentioned Kentucky in his introduction. You spend some
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  Speaker 1: time in your book talking about that state. What stood
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  Speaker 1: out about Kentucky and why was it such a significant
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  Speaker 1: example for your research in your book, Kentucky in some
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  Speaker 1: ways epitomizes this paradox that I'm talking about. Kentucky, if
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  Speaker 1: you go back to the nineteen eighties, was sending moderate
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  Speaker 1: Democrats for the most part to Congress and yet that
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  Speaker 1: has changed over time. By the mid nine nineties, they
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  Speaker 1: were electing more moderate Republicans to go to Congress, and
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  Speaker 1: then increasingly servative Republicans over time. Members of the Tea
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  Speaker 1: Party Caucus, the Freedom Caucus, and today various members of
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  Speaker 1: their delegation are people who are taking the lead and
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  Speaker 1: trying to introduce work requirements to food stamps and and
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  Speaker 1: really trying to scale back social policies. But at the
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  Speaker 1: same time, Kentuckians rely very heavily on federal government social benefits. Now,
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  Speaker 1: you know, it's always been a poor state, and if
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  Speaker 1: you go back to it was a state where the
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  Speaker 1: average person's income more than ten percent of it came
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  Speaker 1: from the federal government through social benefits. But that's more
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  Speaker 1: than doubled now by it was up to and in
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  Speaker 1: several counties it's much higher. It's up boards of thirty.
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  Speaker 1: And some of those same counties are electing some of
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  Speaker 1: these very conservative members of Congress. So it illustrates this
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  Speaker 1: paradox is not the same thing true, Suzanne about border
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  Speaker 1: states and the sound in general. Again, wise, Kentucky significantly
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  Speaker 1: different from say, Mississippi, Arkansole, Missouri. All of those places
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  Speaker 1: have seen this trend in recent decades. Why does Kentucky
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  Speaker 1: stand out, Well, Kentucky is illustrative of the others. It's um,
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  Speaker 1: it's particularly extreme. This paradox is particularly extreme there. But
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  Speaker 1: you're right, Um, we could find this paradox in many
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  Speaker 1: states throughout the country, and you're mentioning several in the South.
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  Speaker 1: But I found when I looked at states all over
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  Speaker 1: the country that there's been an increase in the percentage
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  Speaker 1: of the average person's income that comes from these federal
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  Speaker 1: social government transfers. And at the county level, it's true
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  Speaker 1: in counties everywhere, including some of the wealthiest counties in
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  Speaker 1: the country. It's gone up everywhere. So you find this
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  Speaker 1: paradox is quite ubiquitous. And that's what I really wanted
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  Speaker 1: to delve into. Now, the paradox you talk about is
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  Speaker 1: not necessarily something new. This kind of idea has been
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  Speaker 1: out there for some time. You could go back to
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  Speaker 1: books like the one that Thomas Frank did in two
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  Speaker 1: thousand four, What's the matter with Kansas? Can you tell
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  Speaker 1: us about the kind of research that you did and
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  Speaker 1: the kind of things that you discovered that that show
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  Speaker 1: why states like Kentucky are electing people that don't necessarily
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  Speaker 1: align with the interests of a population increasingly dependent on
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  Speaker 1: government programs. Right well, I tried to dig into this.
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  Speaker 1: I used survey data to look at whether the number
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  Speaker 1: of policies that people use, or the types of policies
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  Speaker 1: they use, has some bearing on their attitudes about government,
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  Speaker 1: and I found that it does make some difference. Many
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  Speaker 1: of our social policies in the United States are rather
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  Speaker 1: hidden by design. There hidden in the tax code, for example.
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  Speaker 1: I'm thinking of things like the home mortgage interest deduction,
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  Speaker 1: and it is the case that people who have used
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  Speaker 1: those policies it really just does not affect their attitudes
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  Speaker 1: about government at all. But even the more visible policies,
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  Speaker 1: things like food stamps and unemployment insurance and medicaid and
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  Speaker 1: so on, don't have a great bearing on most attitudes
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  Speaker 1: about government. They do make people feel more likely to
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  Speaker 1: feel that government has helped them in times of need,
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  Speaker 1: or that it's given them opportunities to improve their standard
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  Speaker 1: of living, but it doesn't make much of a dent
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  Speaker 1: on other attitudes that they may have. But what I
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  Speaker 1: found was more consequential was people's attitudes about welfare. So
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  Speaker 1: there are survey questions that go back over many decades
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  Speaker 1: where people are asked about their their views about welfare,
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  Speaker 1: and about forty percent of Americans will say they have
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  Speaker 1: very unfavorable views towards welfare. What I found was that
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  Speaker 1: that trans it's into very negative attitudes about government. So
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  Speaker 1: whatever people are thinking of when they say that that
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  Speaker 1: they don't like welfare, it seems to them to be
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  Speaker 1: like a microcosm of government. So in interviews, people said
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  Speaker 1: to me that they felt that some social benefits were
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  Speaker 1: unfair because once people were earning a little bit more,
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  Speaker 1: they no longer qualified for them, and they felt that
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  Speaker 1: they were going particularly to people who didn't work, and
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  Speaker 1: they felt they were working hard and so on. And
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  Speaker 1: then in turn, it seems that they are thinking of
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  Speaker 1: government as having those same attributes, that government is favoring
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  Speaker 1: someone else and doing so unfairly. And that was a
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  Speaker 1: very powerful attitude that that really just kept jumping out
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  Speaker 1: from all of the kinds of analyzes that I was doing.
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  Speaker 1: One of the things that's so surprising about this is
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  Speaker 1: that what we used to call welfare was aid to
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  Speaker 1: families with dependent children, a new Deal pol see that
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  Speaker 1: was around until when Congress terminated it and that was
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  Speaker 1: the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities signed into law by
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  Speaker 1: President Bill Clinton, and the program was replaced by a
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  Speaker 1: much more restrictive policy called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.
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  Speaker 1: And today less than one percent of the American public
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  Speaker 1: uses that policy at any point in time, So will
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  Speaker 1: there as it used to exist is almost extinct. And
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  Speaker 1: yet these very strong and anti welfare attitudes are as
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  Speaker 1: prevalent as ever, and they really drive this kind of
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  Speaker 1: antipathy hostility towards government more broadly. Who is Mr No
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  Speaker 1: and how does he figure in the story. Thomas Massey
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  Speaker 1: is a very conservative member of Congress who has been
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  Speaker 1: called Mr No because he seems to vote against most
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  Speaker 1: everything and he's very much against social policy provision. And
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  Speaker 1: yet his own district in Kentucky includes several counties where
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  Speaker 1: over thirty or forty or fifty percent of the average
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  Speaker 1: person's income comes from federal government social benefits. How does
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  Speaker 1: Mr No survive? Right? Right? Okay, So let me distinguish
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  Speaker 1: a couple of things here. So the attitudes about welfare
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  Speaker 1: helped to explain people's hostility to government. But then how
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  Speaker 1: people vote is a separate matter, and they're what comes
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  Speaker 1: into play is what I call a participatory tilt. So
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  Speaker 1: the people who are most likely to participate in politics
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  Speaker 1: have used plenty of social benefits, just as all Americans have,
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  Speaker 1: but they are more likely to be using social benefits
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  Speaker 1: that are fairly indivisible where government's role is not clear,
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  Speaker 1: such as policies in the tax code, or policies that
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  Speaker 1: they feel strongly they have earned, such as Social Security
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  Speaker 1: and Medicare because of their payroll taxes. And so when
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  Speaker 1: those people are participating, they're not doing it with an
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  Speaker 1: eye toward how much government has helped them themselves through
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  Speaker 1: social benefits. There are many people who feel that government
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  Speaker 1: has helped them a lot. They're people who have used
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  Speaker 1: more means tested, visible policies, and yet those people are
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  Speaker 1: much less likely to participate in elections. They're less likely
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  Speaker 1: to vote, and they're less likely to take part in
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  Speaker 1: all different kinds of political activities. So we have this
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  Speaker 1: participatory tilt in which the people who are least appreciative
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  Speaker 1: of government's roles speak with the loudest voice, and that's
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  Speaker 1: who's heard by elected officials. How does Senate Majority lead
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  Speaker 1: up Mitch McConnell fit into this picture. He's been one
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  Speaker 1: of Kentucky's to United States senators since the nineties. But
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  Speaker 1: he's not exactly a fire breathing Tea Party type and
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  Speaker 1: has had his share of scripes with the Tea Party
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  Speaker 1: and the Republican hard right, explained Mitch McConnell's long gavity
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  Speaker 1: to us. Yeah, Mitch McConnell very interesting politician. You know,
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  Speaker 1: if you go back to the early part of his career,
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  Speaker 1: he was actually quite moderate in his views and fairly
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  Speaker 1: supportive of labor unions. And then he had a real
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  Speaker 1: close election and he changed his mind after that point
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  Speaker 1: in time and decided to cater to the to the
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  Speaker 1: base more, cater to conservatives more, and so he moved
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  Speaker 1: in a more conservative direction. And then he became a
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  Speaker 1: real leader in the Republican Party in Kentucky. And really,
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  Speaker 1: through that kind of model helps to provide an example
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  Speaker 1: for other Republicans who were hoping to get elected in
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  Speaker 1: the state. And so he became a party leader in
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  Speaker 1: the state and that the state really moved in that
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  Speaker 1: direction politically, Professor, when we talk about this issue of
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  Speaker 1: voting against one's economic self interest, there are a couple
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  Speaker 1: other things that we really need to acknowledge. One of
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  Speaker 1: them is race, another one is media such as Fox News.
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  Speaker 1: But let me ask you about race. What role did
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  Speaker 1: you find that race plays in these kinds of attitudes. Well,
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  Speaker 1: race did not play a role overtly in people's attitudes
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  Speaker 1: about government, but it did in their attitudes about welfare,
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  Speaker 1: which in turn shapes their attitudes about government. I found
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  Speaker 1: that there was a racial bias, that whites were much
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  Speaker 1: more likely than people of color to have hostile views
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  Speaker 1: towards towards welfare. And that's in line with what other
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  Speaker 1: scholars have found in the past. That's not new. What
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  Speaker 1: I did find it was new, was that income mattered
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  Speaker 1: a great deal. And I found that people who had
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  Speaker 1: moderate incomes from household income up thirty five thou up
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  Speaker 1: to a hundred thousand dollars, all of the subgroups within that,
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  Speaker 1: we're all significantly more likely to have unfavorable views towards
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  Speaker 1: welfare than we're lower income people. And then we're hiring
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  Speaker 1: come people interestingly. And you know, when you think of it,
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  Speaker 1: that makes sense in that over the past few decades,
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  Speaker 1: middle income people, they've really increased their productivity a great deal,
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  Speaker 1: but their their wages have been very stagnant, and so
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  Speaker 1: they've increased productivity in order to maintain household earnings. It's
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  Speaker 1: been a difficult time for the middle class and the
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  Speaker 1: United States because fewer jobs come with benefits. Higher education
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  Speaker 1: is harder to afford. So for people who would like
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  Speaker 1: their children to have greater opportunities than they've had, it's
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  Speaker 1: very difficult to help to provide those and so on.
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  Speaker 1: Is the middle class more hostile to wealth because as
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  Speaker 1: you acknowledge, it's getting harder and harder to be middle
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  Speaker 1: class and stay middle class. Some of these folks looking
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  Speaker 1: over the precipice thinking, gosh, that could be me. I'm
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  Speaker 1: so repelled by that thought. I'll translate that into a
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  Speaker 1: repellent view of government assistance. I think you've articulated that
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  Speaker 1: very well. That's very much in line with what we
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  Speaker 1: heard from people once we did open ended interviews and
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  Speaker 1: really asked them to talk about their views about these
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  Speaker 1: public policies. That's very much what we were hearing from
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  Speaker 1: people that this is it's been a difficult time recent decades,
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  Speaker 1: and people have been working hard, they've been struggling. They
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  Speaker 1: just don't feel like they're getting ahead. And there is
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  Speaker 1: that antipathy to welfare and to government broadly. Suzanne, what
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  Speaker 1: is the submerged state? That sounds quite conspirator. So I
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  Speaker 1: wrote a book a few year yars ago called the
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Submerged State, and what I meant by that was these
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  Speaker 1: policies that I've been mentioning that are um by their design,
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  Speaker 1: makes government's role quite unclear in them. Many of our
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: social benefits in the United States are channeled through the
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: tax code, and here I'm thinking of things like the
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: home mortgage interest deduction, the earned income tax credit, the
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: tax exempt status, and employer provided health and retirement benefits,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: and many others. We provide a lot of benefits in
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: this way, and most of them, with the exception of
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  Speaker 1: the earned income tax credit, and then a few smaller ones,
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  Speaker 1: are upwardly redistributive. They give most of their benefits to
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: fairly high income people. But people tend not to think
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  Speaker 1: of these as social benefits because the way they're delivered
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  Speaker 1: is simply that people pay less in taxes. Now, from
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: an accounting perspective, it really doesn't matter whether UM, I,
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  Speaker 1: as the government, send you a check to help you
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  Speaker 1: to pay for your housing, or if I allow you
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  Speaker 1: to pay less in taxes because of your housing. Um
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  Speaker 1: it's a wash from the point of view of federal revenues,
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  Speaker 1: but for the recipient it can feel very different. People
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  Speaker 1: see government's role when it comes in that check, but
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  Speaker 1: not when it's channeled through the tax code, and so
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  Speaker 1: much of American government is, and in particularly these social
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  Speaker 1: benefits are in what I call the submerged state. Professor,
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  Speaker 1: in talking about this issue, I was struck by a
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  Speaker 1: vignette in your book where you discuss some people applying
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  Speaker 1: for welfare and how they were made to feel shame
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  Speaker 1: over applying compared with people who applied for the Earned
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  Speaker 1: Income Tax credit at an H and R block office,
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  Speaker 1: and it was very easy, very convenient. Are you saying
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  Speaker 1: that the ease of applying, or the ease of getting
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  Speaker 1: the more submerged benefits that plays a role in failing
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  Speaker 1: to get as much support for government programs as might
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  Speaker 1: be more beneficial. Yes, this is ironic. I should say
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  Speaker 1: from the outset that I found that any policies people
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: have used, they were very appreciative of and they found
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  Speaker 1: helpful to their lives. There was some variation in this,
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  Speaker 1: and people who used welfare did find it to be
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: more difficult to attain and more stigmatizing, whereas the policies
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: and the tax code much less so. But then when
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: we look at you know, how does that translate into
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  Speaker 1: people's attitudes about government. When it comes to the policies
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: and the tax code, people simply do not connect the
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  Speaker 1: dots that that's a government benefit. The Earned Income tax
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  Speaker 1: Credit is a very interesting example because it's a policy
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  Speaker 1: for the working poor. Many people who receive it have
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  Speaker 1: no tax liability whatsoever, so they are simply getting a
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  Speaker 1: social benefit that is run through the tax code. But
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  Speaker 1: they're not paying taxes. I mean, some of them are,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: but some are not. And even so it does not
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  Speaker 1: have an impact on their views about government. It does
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  Speaker 1: not give them more positive views about government. And in fact,
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  Speaker 1: this is a group of people who have very negative
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  Speaker 1: attitudes about government, and perhaps you know, not surprisingly because
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: life has been hard for them. They're there working poor,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: they've been they've been working really hard and um and
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  Speaker 1: not seeing much for it. And so but you know,
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  Speaker 1: then then when you go to policies they are for
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  Speaker 1: higher income people. Here again, you know, people appreciate those policies,
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  Speaker 1: but they don't connect them to government. They don't think
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  Speaker 1: of government doing something for them through those benefits. They
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  Speaker 1: simply think they're paying less in taxes. Susan. Can we
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: come back to Rice for a second. Border states and
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: the former Confederate States are pretty deeply read, at least
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  Speaker 1: at a presidential level. When folks in those states here government,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: do they also hear affirmative action, marriage equality, immigration, things
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  Speaker 1: that might trouble them? Is that part of what's going
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: on here? Well, I think that there are several things
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: that are going on that, you know, I really focus
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  Speaker 1: in my book on what's happened to social wealthare policies
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: over these past many decades, but of course they did
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: not exist in a vacuum over the same period of time.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: I think that people in some states in the country
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: that have a more socially conservative culture began to feel
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: more alienated from the Democratic Party because of abortion issues
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: and marriage equality issues and gay rights. So that's certainly
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: going on. It's also the case, you know, if we
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: go to Kentucky, for example, that environmental policies have been
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: used by Republicans, they what they have done. I've been
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: talking a lot about connecting the dots and how people
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: fail to connect the dots between policies they themselves have used,
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  Speaker 1: and what government is like and what government does for them, etcetera.
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  Speaker 1: But I think that conservatives have been quite effective at
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  Speaker 1: connecting the dots and environmental policy in Kentucky and saying,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: you know, the economy is doing poorly because liberals have
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: enacted these environmental policies that have been bad for the
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: coal industry, and we've lost jobs, and therefore everyone is
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: worth off. Now, there's not a lot of evidence for that.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, coal jobs have been departing from Kentucky for
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: decades and for all sorts of reasons that before environmental
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: policies existed. But it's a story. It's a narrative that
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: has been told and seemingly has had a real impact.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: So it's an illustration of how, you know, it matters
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: how public officials and organizations connect the dots for people
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: and tell them about government's role in their lives. So, Professor,
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  Speaker 1: if you have to make a prediction about the future
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: of government programs in the United States, would you say that, say,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: five to ten years from now, we'll be seeing more
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: spending on all these kinds of social programs less or
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: about the same. Well, I think we have a big
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: problem that is coming down the road, and that is
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  Speaker 1: that we are collecting less in revenues while we're spending
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  Speaker 1: more as a country. And you know, the tax cuts
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  Speaker 1: from right now, we're not feeling the pain from those
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: so much because the economy is doing well. But you know,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: there will be cycles in the economy, and when there's
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: another economic downturn, we're going to really face some problems
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: about how to afford these social benefits that at this
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: point in time Americans rely upon and people really need,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: given changes in the economy from the post world where
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: you period. So I think the Americans will continue to
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: want these social policies. That's not going to change, but
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: I think that there are going to be really difficult
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: decisions ahead. Professor. Thank you so much for joining us.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed it. Thank you. Benchmark will be back
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: next week. Until then, you can find us on the
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Terminal, Bloomberg dot com, our Bloomberg capp, as well
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: as podcast destinations such as the Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: wherever you listen. We'd love it if you took the
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: time to rate and review the show so more listeners
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: can find us. And you can find us on Twitter
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: follow me at scott Landman, Dan Your at Moss Underscore Ecode,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: and our guest Suzanne Metler is at Susanne Metler. One
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Benchmark is produced by Tofur Foreheads. The head of Bloomberg
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Podcasts is Francesca Levy. Thanks for listening, See you next time.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Two sunded by the Night under the bo