Chapter 6 takes stock of several insights that follow from the previous five chapters. One set of insights concerns expectations of a left-wing turn. Such expectations overlook the filtering role of fairness beliefs and fail to account for the redistribution to facet of redistributive preferences. Once these blind spots are accounted for, there are few reasons to expect a systematic relationship between an increase in income inequality and demand for redistribution. Another set of insights speaks to mass attitudinal change: The argument presented in the previous chapters points to factors that have received limited attention in political economy, including fiscal stress, survey design, and long-term partisan dynamics. One factor, immigration-induced ethnic diversity, is conspicuous by its absence. Part of the disconnect between inequality and support for redistribution could be due to hostility to immigrants. This chapter concludes by proposing several amendments to this line of reasoning, which, jointly, explain why, in this book, immigration-induced diversity ultimately takes a back seat.

This chapter introduces the book’s main research question, that is, the fact that rising inequality does not appear to benefit an egalitarian redistributive agenda. It shows how, in Great Britain, despite a sharp rise in income inequality, agreement with the claim that the government should redistribute income from the rich to the poor has decreased over time. In the United States, overall stability in mass support for redistribution hides a decline in the attitudinal gap between the high- and low-income respondents, despite expectations that this gap should increase with income inequality. How can this empirical evidence be reconciled with reasonable assumptions underpinning expectations of rising support for redistribution? Under what conditions can attitudes toward redistributive social policies change and act as a countervailing force to rising inequality? The remainder of the chapter lays out the book's answers to these questions and presents the empirical strategy. A central claim is that attitudes toward redistributive social policies are shaped by at least two motives, material self-interest and fairness reasoning, and that the relative importance of each is situational.

Chapter 5 examines the conditions under which people are informed of the pocketbook consequences of a given redistributive policy and act according to their material self-interest in spite of what fairness reasoning prescribes. When stakes are transparent and high, people will disregard their fairness concerns and take the self-interested position instead. This mechanism has the most consequences for policy attitudes shaped by reciprocity beliefs. Indeed, as discussed in Chapter 2, on redistribution to issues, many people are cross-pressured, that is, inclined, against their “objective” material interest, to support or oppose a given policy out of fairness concerns. For these individuals, reasoning as an income maximizer can result in a dramatic departure from what fairness reasoning would prescribe. Chapter 5 examines how this simple argument helps explain variations in the income gradient, i.e., differences in the extent to which the rich and the poor disagree on redistributive issues.

Chapter 4 asks to what extent people, when seeking to do the fair thing, also end up doing the self-interested thing. This question raises the possibility that fairness reasoning and the fairness beliefs people hold can lead them to opinions that, on average, align with their economic interest. The evidence presented in this chapter suggests that the tension between fairness reasoning and material self-interest is most acute in the case reciprocity beliefs and support for redistribution to policies and less so for proportionality beliefs and support for redistribution from policies. Specifically, while proportionality beliefs correlate with someone’s earning potential and risk exposure, reciprocity beliefs do not. As a result, there is a large share of low-income individuals who find a decline in redistribution to fair despite being more likely to be adversely affected by it. Conversely, there is a large share of high-income individuals who find an increase in redistribution to fair despite being unlikely to benefit from it. One reason for the latter is the robust correlation between reciprocity beliefs, on the one hand, and liberal-authoritarian values, on the other.

Chapter 2 builds on research across the social sciences to provide a parsimonious approach to the study of fairness reasoning “in action.” In Western democracies, it argues, reasoning about the fairness of redistributive social policies implies two types of fairness evaluation: (1) how fair is it for some to make (a lot) more money than others in the marketplace and (2) how fair is it for some to receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes? Each question calls to mind a different norm of fairness: the proportionality norm, which prescribes that individual rewards be proportional to effort and talent, or the reciprocity norm, which prescribes that cooperative behavior be rewarded more than uncooperative behavior. Agreement with these two norms is quasi-universal. Where people differ is with regard to their fairness beliefs, that is, their assessment of the status quo as more or less deviating from what these norms prescribe.

Because people hold different empirical beliefs regarding the fairness of the status quo, they also disagree over which policies to support or oppose. This is the focus of Chapter 3. Fairness beliefs provide individuals with a mental map to interpret the world and form opinions on redistributive social policies. Because what counts as a fair allocation of market income is different from what counts as a fair allocation of social benefits, beliefs about the fairness of the former can differ from beliefs about the fairness of the latter. As a result, fairness reasoning implies a disconnect between attitudes toward policies that take market income from those who have more (e.g., predistribution and taxation policies) and attitudes toward policies that give to people who can no longer provide for themselves (e.g., generous and inclusive social insurance). As a short-hand, the first types of policies are called redistribution from policies and the second type redistribution to policies. The chapter provides a friendly horse race between existing work and the conceptualization presented in this book: The evidence overwhelmingly supports the latter.

This concluding chapter summarizes this book’s main contributions to researchers’ understanding of this multifaceted response to rising inequality. It then highlights important take aways for policymakers and researchers and concludes with informed – if more speculative – insights regarding the future of redistributive politics in postindustrial democracies.

How do people form proportionality beliefs? How do these beliefs change? Chapter 9 uses British panel data to document the push and pull between the discursive context people are socialized into, on the one hand, and economic hardship, on the other. Using British panel data collected over more than a decade, I show that individuals experiencing hardship are more likely to resist right-wing claims regarding the fairness of markets and income differences.

Chapter 8 traces the unexpected empirical patterns described in Chapter 1 to belief change and framing effects, themselves triggered by changes in how elites compete over redistributive issues. In line with the argument presented in Part 1, it also shows that belief change plays out differently depending on (1) which type of fairness beliefs is affected by partisan dynamics (proportionality or reciprocity) and (2) people’s position as net beneficiaries (or net contributors) of redistribution to policies, as proxied by their income level. In Great Britain, in particular, I find that framing effects tied to survey design further explain how belief change affects answers to the traditional redistribution question. In the United States, the decline in the size of the income gradient follows from the politicization of redistribution to policies (and reciprocity concerns) over redistribution from policies (and proportionality concerns). Against common expectations, the decline in the income gradient originates in growing support for redistribution among rich Democrats, not declining support among poor (often white) Republicans.