ABSTRACT
The goal of this concluding chapter is to highlight options moving forward in policy research and scholarship to examine the policy dynamics highlighted by Tolerable Inequality. Tolerable Inequality concludes by looking at the ways Soft Equality can lead to around inequality where people are seen as out of line if they ask for too much equality, too soon. This book argues that neither policy nor process currently meets the expectations set for it by the public. Instead, we see policies and processes that use forces to compel, contain, or condemn the behavior of certain people to maintain predictive advantages, which hurts all members of the public. Expectations establish the value acceptability of real or perceived inequality and Tolerable Inequality is the degenerative product of actors and institutions who use the policy process to harmonize otherwise objectionable deviations into established norms. This chapter identifies the way Soft Equality is intolerable and highlights five elements to correct intolerable equality, including simultaneous attention, celebration of difference, unpredictability, perverse policy analysis, incentives and accountability of policies and social norms; and a shift in the membership and preferences of higher-value constituencies.
