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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

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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

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Speaker 1: social benefits in the United States are channeled through the

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Speaker 1: tax code, and here I'm thinking of things like the

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Speaker 1: home mortgage interest deduction, the earned income tax credit, the

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Speaker 1: tax exempt status, and employer provided health and retirement benefits,

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Speaker 1: and many others. We provide a lot of benefits in

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Speaker 1: more difficult to attain and more stigmatizing, whereas the policies

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Speaker 1: and the tax code much less so. But then when

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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

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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,

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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

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Speaker 1: life has been hard for them. They're there working poor,

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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

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Speaker 1: come back to Rice for a second. Border states and

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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,

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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

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Speaker 1: on here? Well, I think that there are several things

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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

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Speaker 1: over these past many decades, but of course they did

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Speaker 1: not exist in a vacuum over the same period of time.

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Speaker 1: I think that people in some states in the country

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Speaker 1: that have a more socially conservative culture began to feel

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Speaker 1: more alienated from the Democratic Party because of abortion issues

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Speaker 1: and marriage equality issues and gay rights. So that's certainly

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Speaker 1: going on. It's also the case, you know, if we

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Speaker 1: go to Kentucky, for example, that environmental policies have been

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Speaker 1: used by Republicans, they what they have done. I've been

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Speaker 1: talking a lot about connecting the dots and how people

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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,

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Speaker 1: you know, the economy is doing poorly because liberals have

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Speaker 1: enacted these environmental policies that have been bad for the

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Speaker 1: coal industry, and we've lost jobs, and therefore everyone is

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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

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Speaker 1: decades and for all sorts of reasons that before environmental

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Speaker 1: policies existed. But it's a story. It's a narrative that

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Speaker 1: has been told and seemingly has had a real impact.

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Speaker 1: So it's an illustration of how, you know, it matters

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Speaker 1: how public officials and organizations connect the dots for people

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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

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Speaker 1: of government programs in the United States, would you say that, say,

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Speaker 1: five to ten years from now, we'll be seeing more

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Speaker 1: spending on all these kinds of social programs less or

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Speaker 1: about the same. Well, I think we have a big

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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

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Speaker 1: so much because the economy is doing well. But you know,

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Speaker 1: there will be cycles in the economy, and when there's

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Speaker 1: another economic downturn, we're going to really face some problems

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Speaker 1: about how to afford these social benefits that at this

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Speaker 1: point in time Americans rely upon and people really need,

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Speaker 1: given changes in the economy from the post world where

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Speaker 1: you period. So I think the Americans will continue to

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Speaker 1: want these social policies. That's not going to change, but

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Speaker 1: I think that there are going to be really difficult

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Speaker 1: decisions ahead. Professor. Thank you so much for joining us.

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Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed it. Thank you. Benchmark will be back

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Speaker 1: next week. Until then, you can find us on the

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Terminal, Bloomberg dot com, our Bloomberg capp, as well

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Speaker 1: as podcast destinations such as the Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or

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Speaker 1: wherever you listen. We'd love it if you took the

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Speaker 1: time to rate and review the show so more listeners

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Speaker 1: can find us. And you can find us on Twitter

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Speaker 1: and our guest Suzanne Metler is at Susanne Metler. One

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Speaker 1: Benchmark is produced by Tofur Foreheads. The head of Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: Podcasts is Francesca Levy. Thanks for listening, See you next time.

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Speaker 1: Two sunded by the Night under the bo