crashmonitor Posted December 16, 2013 Share Posted December 16, 2013 (edited) I remember a Denis Healey interview where he talked about his first job, a milk round, aged 14. One morning a mother approached the milk float carrying a jug. His superior broke the top off a bottle and poured the milk into the jug. Seal was still in place so got returned as breakage. Later the guy says to young Healey, I never know whether I should do that or not because she smokes. In the interview, Healey said this was the first time he came across the concept of the 'un-derserving poor'. The concept of undeserving now is very un PC, if you try to analyse why the poor get into difficulty you are going to be told you really haven't got a clue. The clueless are probably puritanical savers with a lower discretionary spend than the poor, though admittedly the pay off will be income being diverted into solid assets. In the US where they do try and analyse these things they found that poor New Yorkers spent one quarter of their income on cigarettes. And poor was a rather generous $30,000.......so we are talking much higher than that at lower levels. Poverty comes out of a taxation system that taxes working class culture..........in this country that is Poundland, Lotto, Cigarettes and alcohol. VAT, lottery tickets and excise duty are all regressive taxes. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/low-income-smokers-in-new-york-spend-25-of-their-income-on-cigarettes/262627/ Edited December 16, 2013 by crashmonitor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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