As long as it doesn’t result in real hunger or real ill health I see no problem with one sector of the society living substantially below the average in terms of what most people have as a part of their normal lives.
It motivates many and those that are not motivated provide the low skill workforce that any society needs.
Why should a family in which the earners put themselves out and make sacrifices in order to provide a good standard of living be penalised by having their wages skimmed in order to give to those who either won’t or can’t do the same?
Provision of a safety net and provision of essential services by taxing everybody equally is fine but to target those who earn more is simply immoral almost as much as the local taxation based on property value, and not the number of people IN a property.
In my opinion it’s way past time for a root and branch reform of just what the government delivers and how it is funded. It is also way past time that politicians continued to raise taxes and increase public spending when the thing that any family would do when faced with falling incomes would be to cut back on spending. But then any family could not simply go to the provider of their income and help themselves to more as governments, and this one in particular, does.
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