Two groups display the highest support for generous redistribution to policies: (1) low-income beneficiaries, irrespective of their reciprocity beliefs, and (2) high-income contributors who trust that these policies benefit deserving recipients. This coalition is held together by redistribution to policies’ asymmetric economic implications. For low-income beneficiaries, redistribution to policies are high stakes, explaining high baseline support irrespective of reciprocity beliefs. In contrast, the uncertainty over the costs to high-income contributors of more generous redistribution to policies favors fairness reasoning, explaining higher than expected support within this group. Chapter 7 argues that fiscal stress, in the form of fiscal adjustment, can introduce a wedge in this pro-redistribution to coalition. Indeed, when the tax implications of generous social spending are no longer a hypothetical, it becomes much easier for people to reason from the perspective of their own pocketbook. In such a context, high-income respondents will react by choosing to concentrate financial efforts on social programs they directly benefit from, at the expense of redistribution to policies.

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.