Just read something that made me think of this: When the workers swelled the ranks of the poor, the government stepped in once more — this time to ass

Just read something that made me think of this: When the workers swelled the ranks of the poor, the government stepped in once more — this time to assist capitalists who petitioned for tax-funded favors. As even the anti-libertarian historian Christopher A. Ferrara explains, “England’s response to the crisis of poverty among the landless proletariat” was a system of poor relief supplements to meager wages, adopted de facto throughout England (beginning in 1795) in order to ensure that families did not starve. The result … was a vast, government-subsidized mass of wage-dependent paupers whose capitalist employers, both urban and rural, were freed from the burden of paying even bare subsistence wages. http://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/enclosure-acts-industrial-revolution/ http://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/enclosure-acts-indust... Just like tax credits (and housing benefit). The UK establishment have been "helping" the poor for a long time.