The ****less idle who live on the dole are a bit of a red herring. The fact is that most claimants of welfare are employees who recieve poor wages from greedy employers unwilling to pay a fair wage, the government is then forced to top up the low wage in the form of tax credits. If employers were no longer subsidised and made pay a fair wage then the welfare budget could be slashed.
Yep this is a massive problem. One that needs deep thought to work out. Because you cant just stop the in work benefits without something in its place. Maybe a much higher minimum wage ? Some clever bod needs to work ot how much it costs region by region to "live". What it costs to eat/heat and shelter someone pluss 10% pocket money. Divide that up into a wage and go from there.
Obviously its not that easy but something has to give - will prices go up ? Probably. Will shareholder loose out ? probably. Will pensions be effected ? Yep. But we really will have to start looking at this stuff.
The answers to the worlds problems do not lie in big business leeching cheap labour and tax payers subsidizing them to turn a profit...if we are a market driven economy then do it properly - its time we stopped subsidizing multi national companies - If there is demand for a product/service then there will always be someone wanting to supply...time to stop the big tax breaks ect.