The hidden quality of social welfare benefits in the tax code means that many people are largely unaware of them, and have no idea of their overall impact. How could these policies of the submerged state be revealed, and what difference would it make? Matt Guardino and I created a web-based experiment to test the […]
Suzanne Mettler
Suzanne Mettler is a political scientist at Cornell University and author of The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy.
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Redistributing Upwards
Most people think of social welfare policies as ones that aim to help people with low or moderate incomes, but the largest entitlements in what I call the Submerged State conglomeration of policies channeled through the tax code and subsidies to private organizations—benefit especially high income households. The three submerged policies that are most costly […]
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Invisibility and policy design
Americans are largely unaware of many public policies.
