Elites cultivate the impression of mobility to win support for regressive policy

Evidence

Conversely, (capitalist or rich) elites may have an interest in either increasing social mobility or creating the impression of greater social mobility in order to build support for policies that favor capital or reduce the taxation of high incomes. — Daron Acemoglu, Georgy Egorov, and Konstantin Sonin, Institutional Change and Institutional…, 817

Categorization

• QUESTION: How would one test empirically whether elite messaging about mobility shifts tax-policy opinion?
• XREF: Connects to the financialization/income-inequality reading and to marginal-productivity theory as claims-making discourse.