Reciprocity beliefs represent a challenge for researchers. Chapter 4 found a puzzling and robust correlation between reciprocity beliefs, on the one hand, and liberal–authoritarian values (LAVs), on the other. Chapter 10 argues that, underpinning the correlation between reciprocity beliefs and LAVs, it is hypothesized, is a disagreement over how to best respond to social dilemmas. People with more authoritarian response patterns to LAV items have a preference for maximizing cooperation by minimizing instances in which people who free ride on the collective effort unfairly walk away unpunished. People with more liberal values have a preference for minimizing instances in which people are unfairly punished despite being cooperators. In a discursive context, rich are more concerned about moral hazard, welfare abuse, and opportunistic behavior; people with more authoritarian response patterns will be more likely to incorporate such claims into their own basket of fairness considerations; and people with more liberal response patterns will be more likely to resist them. Chapter 10 provides evidence in support of this argument.

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.

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.