Episode 1.10: Redistribution as Fairness, with charlotte cavaillé

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In this episode, we have a conversation about the politics of redistribution in an age of rising inequality. 

Our guest is Dr. Charlotte Cavaillé, an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the University of Michigan’s Ford School. We discuss with Charlotte her book project, Fair Enough: Support for Redistribution in the Age of Inequality, which seeks to explain how citizens reason about taxing the rich and spending on social benefits for the middle-class and poor. 

The book’s starting point is a thorny puzzle of political economy: why do governments in advanced democracies do so little to counteract rising inequality? In countries like the United States and Britain -- where income and wealth have become increasingly concentrated in the hands of the very rich while living standards have stagnated for most households -- why don’t we see governments playing Robin Hood, taking more from those at the top and distributing more generous social benefits to the rest of the population?

A large literature has established that part of the answer lies in political inequality: in the ways the rich convert their economic resources into political influence. The middle class and poor may want redistribution but they cannot get it, because they lack political influence.  

What Charlotte does is to take a step back to ask: how popular is Robin Hood anyway? A substantial part of the reason why we don’t see more redistribution, Charlotte argues, is because most citizens in places like the U.S. and the U.K. are not demanding it -- that is, even they would benefit from it. Charlotte wants to know why.

Drawing on insights from behavioral economics, she argues that, if we want to understand the mass politics of redistribution, we have to stop thinking about people as purely self-interested income-maximizers. We need to start thinking of people as social beings who place a fundamental value on principles of fairness. When citizens think about redistribution, they start by asking themselves fairness-oriented questions about whether everyone is getting what they deserve, who is contributing to the common good, and who is free-riding, taking advantage of the generosity of others.

In this conversation, Charlotte traces out the logic of redistribution as fairness and talks to us about how this logic can explain weak support for redistribution, even as inequality skyrockets. We also talk with Charlotte about other puzzling empirical patterns, such as why the affluent often support more generous social spending than the poor. And we discuss the prospects for progressive reform, including why the COVID pandemic might -- and, just as well, might not -- generate the political conditions for expansionary social policy in advanced democracies. 

Works discussed in the episode:

Atkinson, Anthony and Thomas Piketty, eds. 2007. Top Incomes Over the Twentieth Century: A Contrast Between Continental European and English-Speaking Countries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Little, Andrew T. 2019. “The Distortion of Related Beliefs.” American Journal of Political Science, 63(3), pp. 675-689.

Meltzer, Allan H. and Scott F. Richard. 1981. “A Rational Theory of the Size of Government.” Journal of Political Economy, 89(5), pp. 914-927.

Moene, Karl Ove and Michael Wallerstein. 2001. “Inequality, Social Insurance, and Redistribution.” American Political Science Review, pp. 859-874.

Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Piketty, Thomas. 2020. Capital and Ideology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Roemer, John E. 1998. “Why the Poor Do Not Expropriate the Rich: An Old Argument in New Garb.” Journal of Public Economics, 70(3), pp. 399-424.

Scheve, Kenneth and David Stasavage. 2016. Taxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press.