Finally, communication can also affect support for tax policies. In a recent article, Philipp Genschel, Laura Seelkopf and I look at attitudes towards fuel taxation – and how making an explicit link to the climate crisis can increase support: ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Result: There is a ‘hidden consensus’ across the ideological spectrum – people prefer progressive taxes (with the exception of alcohol/tobacco duties). Interestingly, people have different attitudes towards national insurance rates for employees and employers with the latter polling more favourably.

One possibility is to borrow more. As @bjoernbremer.bsky.social and @retobuergisser.bsky.social er.bsky.social show, debt is not a priority for citizens when fiscal trade-offs are clear. Increasing debt has only a small effect, getting debt down doesn’t increase support at all: tinyurl.com/346kfzck

 Furthermore, skill and effort are seen as more important to do well in the complex work task, and the earnings of the top earners are perceived as more deserved and fairer. 5/6

In a second step, impartial spectators without any skin in the game can decide whether the bonus should be redistributed. The results show that the preferred a tax rate is around 5 percentage points lower when people performed complex work tasks instead of routine work. 4/6

The ICT revolution has changed work complexity of top income earners. We argue that this reduces political appetite to tax them: People perceive top income from more complex work as involving more skill and effort, and therefore see it as more deserving and fairer. 2/6

The ICT revolution has fundamentally transformed how we work. Has this had an effect on demand for redistribution? In our latest work in @jeppjournal.bsky.social, David Hope, Nina Weber, and I run interactive online experiments to answer this question. A short thread. 1/6