March was the fourth month in a row, and the eighth time in the past year, that government was named as the primary problem.

A Gallup poll conducted on 5-8 March 2015 found that 18% of Americans see government as this country's number-one problem. That problem beat out the economy (11%), unemployment (10%), and health care (7%).

The latest poll results are based on interviews conducted March 5-8, 2015. A random sample of 1,025 adults were asked, "What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?" The margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

And here is a big problem with government:

The Gallup poll result is consistent with research conducted by Ilyana Kuziemko, Michael I. Norton, Emmanuel Saez, and Stefanie Stantcheva, published in 2013 by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Five thousand Americans polled by this research didn't trust the government to do the redistributing of income.

An original research assumption was that "the more people knew about how the rich were getting richer, the more they would pressure their representatives in Washington to redistribute that wealth more 'fairly'." But "[e]vidence from survey data does not support this prediction." In fact, exactly the opposite is occurring.

The research found:

Information about income inequality makes respondents trust government less.

Emphasizing the severity of the income inequality problem appears to reduce the willingness of Americans to trust the government to fix it.

Author Emmanuel Saez said:

Standard models predict that support for redistribution should increase with income inequality, yet there has been little evidence of greater demand for [government] redistribution over the past thirty years in the US, despite historic increases in income concentration[.]

"Standard models," huh? Perhaps they need to be updated. But don't expect the Democrats or the MSM to do it. After all, they got Obama elected and re-elected.

Further, research by Matthew Luttig found exactly the same thing. Said Luttig:

Numerous political theorists suggest that rising inequality and the shift in the distribution of income to those at the top should lead to increasing support for liberal policies. But recent evidence contradicts these theories[.] ... In general, the evidence supports the claim that rising inequality has been a force promoting conservatism in the American public. ... the absolute level and the changing structure of inequality have largely been a force promoting conservatism, not increasing support for redistribution as theoretically expected.

The MSM, not wanting to appear foolish (too late), has recently published several articles on this subject, albeit two years tardy. Thomas Edsall, liberal contributing editor at The New York Times, laments:

The conservative shift … on issues of redistribution and inequality pose a significant threat to the larger liberal agenda.

"Here's a perceived problem Democrats sorely want to solve, but Americans are increasingly distrustful of the very tool those Democrats want to use: the federal government."

Progressives/Liberals/Democrats/Big Government fans, are y'all listening?

Dr. Warren Beatty (not the liberal actor) earned a Ph.D. in quantitative management and statistics from Florida State University. Now retired, he was a (very conservative) university professor. He is a veteran who served in the U.S. Army. He blogs at rwno.limewebs.com.