I think without that, there would be more struggling. There have been lots of prices slashed, sales, etc, well before Christmas, with retailers working on tighter margins. They can only do this because they have very tight control on costs, I know someone who has just negotiated a massive rent decrease. And that is not the climate for demanding pay increases and fancy pensions.
Yes, its tough, we all want to earn as much as possible, but for that we need a booming economy, so we need an environment that is good for business.
I was thinking the other day, (after lots of slagging off of Mrs T), how many on the left want to see the redistribution of wealth, rob the rich to feed the poor, etc. Yet the biggest wealth distributions we have seen in modern times, were privatisations of the 80s which lead to lots of "ordinary" people becoming shareholders and having a stake in the stock market. Something unimaginable at one point.
This was followed up by the right to buy, funded often by these share deals too. So people became home owners for the first time, also something many thought they would never be able to do.
The universities were opened up so people who thought they would never go to Uni could.
And all this from Thatcher.
What did Blair do for the poor, well he introduced the minimum wage. But every single report looking into this has said that the gap between rich and poor grew under Blair. And by the time Labour left office, young people are again thinking they will never own property, and will have to spend their lives paying rent to a landlord.
Nothings perfect in a lot of things that have happened over the years, but why do Labour try and make out that they know best when it comes to looking after working class people. Labour want people to stay "working class" as then they are more likely to vote Labour, but if anyone succeeds and then becomes middle class, they tend to vote Tory so they better not succeed!