A Heartwired Messaging Guide for Refocusing America’s Tax Debate on Working People

Challenge

The accumulation of wealth is such a widely accepted goal in the United States that it is a central tenet of the eponymous “American Dream.” Yet, today, upward mobility has stalled and wealth is concentrated increasingly in the hands of a few. Worse, that wealth is often created and maintained at the expense of hard-working Americans. 

There are many excellent organizations and individuals in the field to address this problem. While there is significant agreement among advocates that progressive tax policy and reinvestment in communities are core solutions, key messages in support of those efforts often lack clarity. In particular, while there is lots of discussion about closing the wealth gap by raising the floor, advocates are not talking as much, or as clearly, about closing that gap by lowering the ceiling.

To create effective messages on the politically-heated and emotionally-complex topics of excessive wealth and progressive tax policies, the Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute (EWDi) partnered with Wonder: Strategies for Good to conduct deep audience listening, qualitative research, and qualitative message testing.

Over and over again, polling shows that Americans support higher taxes on the wealthy. Yet, when it comes time for them to vote for the policymakers and policies that will make progressive economic reform happen, we see that their support falls short of a strong and consistent majority. 

In order to achieve majority support and build long-lasting political momentum behind progressive economic policies, we believe it is key to more deeply understand 1) why Americans’ support becomes shaky or inconsistent at the ballot box, and 2) how we can more effectively reach folks to translate their positive polling responses into actionable results in policymaking and at the ballot box. To do this, Wonder’s research with EWDi aimed to target racially and geographically diverse Americans who may lean more ideologically moderate but are persuadable.

Heartwired Insight & Strategy

Through qualitative, in-depth research interviews and focus groups with participants across 15 different states, we learned that persuadable Americans strongly value fairness, cite lived experiences with government working ineffectively, and hold some negative emotions toward billionaires for using their money to buy power within our political system. 

Yet, they also deeply value their own self-identities as hard workers, and therefore relate to what they perceive as billionaires’ values of hard work and the desire to succeed. This leads them to also hold positive beliefs about billionaires and corporations as entities who create jobs and help the economy. 

They often feel embarrassed or anxious when asked about wealth and financial systems – due to their self-perceived lack of knowledge on these topics and/or sensitivity around their own financial status – which can inhibit their sense of agency or desire for action. 

Faced with anxiety about their own finances, they find positive feelings of hope and aspiration in the idea that if they work hard and take advantage of opportunities that come their way, they can someday be wealthy, too. 

Leveraging these insights about our audiences, the Wonder team developed and tested messaging interventions to guide audiences to greater support of progressive tax policies. Our testing showed that the most effective messages:

• keep the focus on the middle class and working people as drivers of the economy, rather than the actions of wealthy people;
• present ‘both sides’ of the debate and provide a curated set of details and facts that allows audiences to arrive at their own conclusions;
• tap into audiences’ desire for fairness and elevate widely-accepted ideas like simplifying the tax system and eliminating loopholes;
• feature messengers that feel both credible and relatable to our audiences; and
• help audiences manage their discomfort around issues of wealth and money management.

Results

Using messaging strategies derived from our Heartwired audience insights, we were able to positively shift persuadable audiences’ opinions about how wealth should be taxed, and their views on billionaires and large corporations. 

These positive shifts occurred even after they were exposed to both opposition and supportive content, and are notable on such an emotionally complex topic – wealth and the economy – that audience members see as strongly intertwined with their day-to-day lives, sense of personal agency, and deeply-held values and identities. 

For example, after seeing our test messaging, our audience shifted to be more supportive of a higher tax rate on wealthy individuals’ investment income:

Interview / Focus Group participant responses (n=24) to the question:

If a person has a net worth of 50 million dollars and makes 5 million dollars a year NOT from work but mostly from investments, do you think their tax rate on that 5 million dollars should be:

	Before seeing test messaging	After seeing test messaging
The same rate as the person making $60,000, 14.9%	54%	↓ 33%
A higher rate, more than 14.9%	42%	63% ↑
A lower rate, less than 14.9%	4%	4%

Audience members also showed notable positive shifts in mindsets that are important for long-term progressive change. For example, in their own words:

BEFORE MESSAGING:

“Well, if we didn’t have these people that are making $50 million, the working class people wouldn’t have a job. The rich contribute to other people, so it is a tough question [of whether to tax them more] because you want them to make money so we can contribute to other people.”

AFTER MESSAGING:

“The root of evil is the love of money, so we ain’t supposed to love money like that. …[Now, I agree more with the idea that ‘the wealthiest 0.1% aren’t contributing in line with what they’ve gained’] because of reading the stories you showed.”  

—Hispanic man, Republican, Very Conservative, 61yo, from California

 

If you are interested in learning more about communicating with persuadable audiences on the economy, billionaires and the wealthy, and tax policy, you can view the detailed messaging recommendations and examples of the recommendations in action in the full guide: Anxiety, Aspiration, and Agency: Refocusing America’s Tax Debate for Working People.

Particularly in the context of the recently solidified tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, our goal is that advocates, communications professionals, and policy experts working to reform the tax code and address excessive wealth concentration in the U.S. will apply these messaging strategies in the field.