This chapter concludes the book by reflecting on its broader implications. It delineates the politics behind credit regimes and reflects on the underlying political coalitions and dynamics behind credit markets’ complementary and substitutive relationships with welfare states. It then discusses how credit markets amplify old and create new forms of social exclusion and inequality through discrimination, credit scoring, or differential credit access. As credit markets have grown more influential and increasingly determine life chances, equal and fair access to credit is now a prerequisite for full participation and inclusion in labor markets, housing markets, as well as educational opportunities and wealth-building trajectories. The chapter ends by discussing potential ways in which credit markets and welfare states can work together, not against each other, to ensure a fairer and more equal distribution of social risks and opportunities.

Considers the likely future of secularism as a fault line in American politics. Secularism is gaining ground, which suggests that it will feed further political polarization, and perhaps even lead to a confessional party system based on religious–secular differences. We also speculate that the conditions may be right for the creation of a new political movement – a Secular Left to parallel the Religious Right. Such a movement is not a certainty, however. Will the strategic candidates seek to mobilize the growing secular population? The chapter, and thus the book, concludes by suggesting that growing secularism need not mean more polarization, as politicians could seek common ground between religionists and secularists.