Christopher Faricy

It Takes a Village: A Test of the Creative Class, Social Capital and Human Capital Theories

Richard Florida argues that the “creative class” is inextricably connected with surges in urban growth. This article, using data from 276 metropolitan statistical areas, empirically tests the creative class theory as compared to the human and social capital models of economic growth. Our results demonstrate that the creative class is not related to growth, whereas human capital predicts economic growth and development and social capital predicts average wage but not job growth. Additionally, we found that clusters of universities correlated highly with economic growth. Our findings should warn policy makers against the use of “creative” strategies for urban economic development.

The politics of social policy in America: The causes and effects of indirect versus direct social spending

The United States has a divided social system in that both the public and private sectors provide citizens with benefits and services. The effects of political party control on public social policy are widely known. An area of study less understood is how partisanship influences private social benefits. I develop and test a theory that political parties’ choice between indirect and direct social expenditures is primarily motivated by a desire to alter the balance between public and private power in society. First, I find no statistically conclusive evidence that Democratic control of the federal government results in higher levels of total social spending. Additionally, my results show that Republican control of the legislature results in a higher ratio of indirect to direct social spending. These results have implications for determining the beneficiaries of social benefits and economic inequality.

Social Policy and Public Opinion: How the Ideological Direction of Spending Influences Public Mood

This article develops a model of public responsiveness to social policy in the United States, focusing in particular on the public’s ability to distinguish between direct and indirect government spending as means of financing social benefits. We argue that public opinion should be responsive to changes in both direct (appropriations) and indirect (tax expenditures encouraging the private provision of social goals) spending. Further, the public should respond to changes in direct and indirect spending in distinct ways consistent with the divergent resource and interpretive effects of the two types of spending. We find that while public opinion is not responsive to the total amount of federal social spending, it is attentive to changes in direct and indirect spending, considered as separate concepts. The results show that the electorate treats changes in the relative allocation of government spending as representing important shifts in the ideological direction of public policy.

The distributive politics of tax expenditures: how parties use policy tools to distribute federal money to the rich and the poor

In this paper, I theorize and show that Democrats and Republicans both distribute money to their core class consistencies through the selection of different types of tax breaks, formally referred to as tax expenditures. The popularity of tax expenditures allows each political party to distribute federal money to unpopular constituencies in ways that reflect the economic ideology of their members. I expect and find that Democratic Party control of the White House results in an increase in the generosity of tax credits that target the working poor, and Republican Party power produces a large expansion of tax deductions, which disproportionately benefit the rich. These results have implications for distributive politics and the partisan politics of income inequality.

Partisanship, Class, and Attitudes towards the Divided Welfare State

Abstract The United States has a divided social welfare state split between public programs and tax subsidies for private benefits. Moreover, this separation is mapped onto divisions of political party and socioeconomic class. Democratic elites prefer creating and expanding public programs that assist the working poor and Republicans prefer using tax subsidies to help wealthier citizens pay for social services and benefits. Are these relationships among partisanship, socioeconomic class, and patterns in social spending reflected in public opinion? Do Democratic voters and the working poor favor public social programs over private? Are Republican voters more likely to support tax subsidies for private welfare over public spending? My analysis shows that while both public spending and tax breaks enjoy similar levels of support in the aggregate, there are partisan and class differences in support for direct social spending versus tax subsidies for social welfare.