Ramesh, you write that “attitudes toward government do not appear to have become more liberal as the number of people paying no income tax has increased. In August 1992 Gallup found that 50 percent of Americans thought that ‘government should do more to solve the country’s problems.’ Gallup asked the same question in June 2008, and got the same results.”
Without a baseline, I don’t find this persuasive. Isn’t it plausible that attitudes toward government might’ve gotten more conservative had the number of people paying no (income) taxes remained static from 1992 to 2008?