It’s all coming apart at the seams in the UK, according to a new study released by the Fabian Society and Webb Memorial Trust.  The study shows that the UK is about to fall off into depths of poverty unseen in over a century.

Labour’s strategy for tackling poverty has reached the end of the road and Britain risks a return to Victorian levels of inequality, according to a major two-year study seen by The Independent.

 

With 20 per cent of the population still stuck in poverty, the report calls for sweeping reform of the tax and welfare systems under which higher earners would finance more generous, universal benefits. The £43,888-a-year ceiling on national insurance contributions (NICs) would be abolished, so people earning more would pay NICs at 11 per cent on all their income above that level, instead of the current 1 per cent.

…

Mr Horton, the Fabian Society’s research director, told The Independent: “We could be at a tipping point that sends Britain back towards Victorian levels of inequality and social segregation…

According to the results of the study, done by the two previously-mentioned, not-exactly-unbiased organizations, the Labour Party’s scheme for levying ultra high taxes on the rich to fund massive socialist wealth redistribution plans has lost favor with the public.  Amazing as it sounds, the middle class in the UK is tired of getting jerked around.

Of course, you can see why just a couple of paragraphs down:

“With all three main parties committed to cut spending to reduce the huge deficit in the public finances…”

It makes you want to laugh, cry, break wind, and squirt a bit o’ carbonated beverage out of your nose, all at the same time, doesn’t it?  For years the welfare state in the UK has been spending, spending, spending, taxing, taxing, taxing, constantly looking for new ways to steal some hard working person’s paycheck and hand it over to some lazy louse, oh… er…  looking for new ways to redistribute wealth to the needy… and what do they have to show for it?  “20 per cent of the population still stuck in poverty” was the wording used in the article.  A “huge deficit in the public finances” was another phrase that stuck in my head.

But!  And please, make sure you’re seated for this…  The Labour Party has a plan!  The tired, old Tory approach, the:

Significant cuts in welfare spending…

would have the effect of:

push[ing] poverty and inequality even higher. And taking the middle class out of the welfare state would set Britain on a path to a set of ‘sink services’ for the poorest, with a deeply segregating effect on society. (Mr. Horton)

No, no, no!  The People’s Welfare Checks must keep rolling!  The poor must be able to expect to have the same standard of living as the middle and upper classes with no effort on their part but voting “Labour” in every election!  This will not do!  The UK can’t possibly make cuts to welfare in the face of a piddly little thing like a “huge deficit in the public finances”.  Don’t be daft!

Here’s what is really happening:

[Mr. Horton] argued that redistribution is working – and that more of it is needed.

Well, slap me silly and call me Patsy, I must admit that when ever I envisioned what I would do if I ever found myself facing insurmountable levels of debt, it would have never occurred to me that the solution would be to spend even more money.  Why, that makes life so much easier!  I’m amazed that poor, indebted people all over the world aren’t out there right now, spending all of their problems into oblivion.  Paying off credit cards with new credit cards!  Riding on unicorns across the rainbow through showers of daisy petals with Elton John’s smash hit “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” playing in the background…   <sniff>  If only people realized that it was this easy to get out of the poor house…

I mean, that whole 20% poverty rate after years of wealth redistribution?  Bah, that’s just a sign that the effort is working!  Good Gods, man!  If only conservatives had the eyes to see it for what it really is!

<slap!>

Did I miss the memo?  Is this the liberal/statist solution to everything, regardless of whatever country they’re in?  Here in America, taxes are going up, government spending is beyond merely “going up”, and people are losing jobs left and right.  But apparently Britain isn’t willing to let us have all the fun, their liberals feel like they need to get a piece of this action.

You want to know what the Progressive’s problem is?  The world over, they can’t see past the end of their noses, and they have no concept of basic math.  They constantly neglect and/or ignore the fact that for every unit of currency handed out by the government to those who do not produce anything of value, it must first take it away from the segment which does produce value.  They never consider the fact that if you taxed all of the wealthy and middle class people in the country at 100%, put every thing in a huge pile, then divided that pile up into equal percentages for every individual in the country, everyone would wind up getting the kingly sum of like a thousand euros.  They’re so worried about the plight of the poor that they either a) don’t see the effect of their policies on the middle and upper classes, or b) they simply don’t care.  It’s ludicrous.  It’s unsustainable.  It will reveal itself for what it really is, sooner or later.

Sucks to be the UK when that happens. (Not that we Americans will have anything to brag about here, of course.)

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