Two wrongs don't make a right

Following a slightly heated debate in my office, I discovered another objection to cutting child benefit for HRT payers. The objection is that there are wealthier people, already unfairly benefiting, and to a greater extent in this country, and that tackling this problem before tackling these greater injustices, is 'unfair'.

I can't argue with the sentiment.  Ideally, inequalities should be tackled in order of their size. However, that doesn't mean that inequalities should not be tackled at all until more damaging unfairness has been dealt with. As I have said previously, incremental improvements are improvements nonetheless.

I can't help feeling that this argument is also underpinned by the now common sense of entitlement many people seem to feel. In some cases it boils down to 'If he's got his hand in the till then why shouldn't I?'. This sentiment is understandable, but quite ugly. It has an 'every man for himself' quality which is surprising given that some of the loudest objections are coming from so called socialists. Needless to say some of the Right have also raised objections which seem to contradict their so called desire for a reduced State.

Camilla Cavendish, writing in The Times, has summed this up well saying "The moral outrage from the richest 15 per cent on this issue has been the ugly face of this (Conservative) conference. We are all loss-averse. But the deficit plan will get nowhere if the pain is not shared. Those who are using concern about non-working mothers to conceal their dismay at their own financial loss have jacked their moral high-ground up so high that it should give the rest of us vertigo".

Where do the roots of our new found feelings of entitlement come from? Camilla also goes on to articulate a possible cause for feelings of outrage which makes a lot of sense to me. She writes that as a voter she is bribable, as we all are, and suggests that the rise of 'middle-class benefits' may have lead to a change. "The very strong reaction to these losses is a striking manifestation of just how successfully we were bribed; how addicted to State largess we have become."  "Gordon Brown's complex system of tax credits was an explicit attempt to expand middle-class welfare" - the ultimate conclusion of which would have been a web in which nearly every single one of us was caught, and corrupted".

Thankfully, and despite the considerable media scorn, the government look like standing firm. Polling has shown that the vast majority of the public support the policy concept even if, as even the Treasury admits, there was no easy way to be completely even-handed between dual and single-earning households.

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