Since income inequality has grown significantly over the past few decades, you might expect support for government redistribution to grow as well. As Americans see the rich get richer and the middle class shrink, the theory goes, they would support higher taxes on the rich and a larger safety net. But that hasn’t happened. In fact, Americans have become slightly less supportive of government policies that reduce income inequality over the past 30 years, and support for redistribution has declined most for two groups of Americans that disproportionately benefit from redistributive policies: the elderly and African-Americans.
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