Many studies have indicated two facts: (1) democracies spend more money on education and health than non-democracies, but these benefits seem to accrue to middle- and upper-income groups rather than to the poor; (2) the G.W. Bush administration tax cuts disproportionately benefited wealthy taxpayers, and that this massive upward transfer of wealth was broadly supported by ordinary Americans. These facts inspire us to ask a question: why do people not support redistribution even if they are suffering from economic distress? The focus of this study is on individual attitudes and beliefs toward redistribution and we assume that individual value orientations such as individualism, collectivism, and power distance are the key to understand attitudes toward redistribution. The first step of analysis was to establish measurement models for personal values using latent variable modeling and then used structure equation modeling to estimate cross-national individual observations drawn from the 5 th wave of the World Value Survey. The second step of analysis was to specify a multilevel confirmatory factor analysis model to estimate hierarchical data (countries and individuals). We found that individual value orientations have significant effects on shaping attitudes toward redistribution but these effects are mediated by micro- and macro-justice principles. Importantly, most people evaluate the allocation of resources in society as a whole using micro-justice principles. The reason that people do not support redistribution is due to their beliefs of micro-justice principles rather than their socioeconomic status or social classes. Macro-justice principles also have significant influence on our attitudes but their effects are relatively smaller than micro-justice principles. Most people are not familiar with macro-justice principles because our culture does not emphasize the concepts of macro-justice.
