and should be a formalised target?
Thought prompted by a Telegraph article.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10927902/Labours-costly-legacy-of-dependence-on-the-state.html
Several years ago when I got the figures off the government (ONS) web site I became aware that at that time almost exactly 50% of households received more from the state than they payed in. All the article tells me that i didn't already know is that the recession has caused the figure to rise slightly since, and that in the 1970's the figure was in the region of 40%. (So 25 years after Thatcher, the country is more socialist than it was before, contrary to what many people seem to believe.)
If you'd asked me when I was younger I would have said help should be for people in exceptional circumstances. Exceptional in statistical terms would mean that figure should be 1%, or 5%, or at most 20%. However I can't see any realistic way back to that from where we are.
Given that we have two main political parties, one of which can be caricatured as the party of the poor that wants to maximise resdistribution, and the other as that of the better-off that wants to minimise it, maybe they should agree to meet half-way and formally set 50% as a target/constraint?
I suppose I think it would kill some arguments that are pointless, because the conflicting forces that lead to the status quo aren't going to go away, and leave politicians to focus on optimising the narrower details of redistribution.
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AIBU?
To think half of all households not paying their way is OK
78 replies
FraidyCat · 27/06/2014 11:33
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