NIU sociologist Jeffrey Kidder leads new study that finds everyday tax talk is ‘morally charged’

[SpartanDem]

As U.S. presidential election campaigns heat up, candidates can expect an earful of complaints over taxes. Now a new study led by a Northern Illinois University sociologist argues that American middle-class hostilities toward the federal income tax follow a common discourse rooted in moral beliefs.

“We propose that everyday tax talk among the middle class is not simply about economics or free markets. Tax talk is morally charged,” NIU sociologist Jeffrey Kidder said.

“In this study, we demonstrate how people associate the income tax with a violation of the moral principle that hard work should be rewarded,” he added. “Our research has implications for how policymakers should frame fiscal issues. Because people intertwine fiscal issues with morality, approaches to tax policy that only emphasize economic benefits for the working and middle classes do not resonate with everyday understandings about what taxes mean to people.”
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So why do Americans feel so hostile to the income tax? Among the researchers’ findings:
•Interview respondents saw themselves as morally deserving and hard-working people, whereas they perceived a tax structure that benefits the idle poor and the idle rich.

“The deserving worker is imagined to be in a morally dominant position, but sandwiched between an economically more powerful group that manipulates the rules for its own benefit and a subordinate group that benefits from government spending but escapes taxation,” Martin said.

“In light of prior research, it is more noteworthy that hostility to recipients of government aid was not reserved for minorities and the poor,” he added. “Rich recipients of bailouts were also disparaged as people who did not deserve money because they did not work for it. In fact, conducting our interviews soon after the passage of TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) and during the growing controversies surrounding the ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), we actually heard more about the undeserving rich than the undeserving poor.”

http://www.niutoday.info/2012/05/23/niu-sociologist-jeffrey-kidder-leads-new-study-that-finds-everyday-tax-talk-is-morally-charged/

Not surprising, when you consider conservative denominations seem to take very economically conservative views. A perfect example is the Southern Baptist that grew out the need protect the slave owners place in society and one the ways they did that was by equating wealth with morality

[dkf]

1. What people miss is this is a general resentment that they have to pay taxes.

People dislike paying taxes period and feel even worse when they feel someone else is paying less than they are. Of course the sentiment will be that someone else should pay them.

Moreover, all these tax breaks have made the populace even more anti. No one wants to contribute more.