ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the dramatic increase in income inequality in the West, in historical and comparative perspective. Scholars have offered various explanations for citizens’ lack of concern for the growing gap between the rich and poor. This chapter discusses the sets of insights to develop an alternative explanation for people’s growing tolerance of inequality and their resistance to redistributing income and wealth. It shows that citizen’s beliefs and popular beliefs about inequality explain a large part of their concerns. Growing levels of income inequality mean that experiences and interactions with people across income, wealth and racial fault lines are becoming more seldom. The statistic of income inequality becomes economic reality when it affects affluent and poor people’s wages and employment.
