As the debate about welfare rolls on, gathering more and more prejudices along the way, one thing is becoming clear. If the shrill language of “shirkers versus strivers” has had one useful effect, it is in revealing that far more working people get their income topped up by benefits than most of us ever imagined.
Poverty campaigners want us to conclude that the Government is wrong to cap benefit rises because so many people in receipt of them are the striving, working poor. Others suggest that we are living through a period where more and more jobs simply fail to provide an acceptable standard of living, and so the State must step in.
I conclude something rather different: that the merry-go-round that takes cash from