The progressive dilemma

From a David Goodhart article in the the Guardian ( via Andrew Sullivan) we have this:

It was the Conservative politician David Willetts who drew my attention to the "progressive dilemma". Speaking at a roundtable on welfare reform, he said: "The basis on which you can extract large sums of money in tax and pay it out in benefits is that most people think the recipients are people like themselves, facing difficulties that they themselves could face. If values become more diverse, if lifestyles become more differentiated, then it becomes more difficult to sustain the legitimacy of a universal risk-pooling welfare state. People ask: 'Why should I pay for them when they are doing things that I wouldn't do?'

Perhaps it strikes a chord because it is just another way of saying “hey, that guy doesn’t deserve my tax money because he’s wicked”? You know the kind of thing, where a criminal tries to claim legal aid to sue a farmer after getting shot during a burglary or where a terrorist who shouldn’t even be in the country claims state benefit. What about young thugs going on holiday or partaking in a little motor racing at my expense? Yeah, that’s the kind of thing.

I know, I know, the progressive dilemma is more subtle than that and is not specifically (or even mainly) about criminality but that’s the chord it struck.