I guess even more disabled people than usual can starve to death or be driven to suicide if it saves a tiny fraction of the country’s GDP. Meanwhile those in charge waste money like there’s no tomorrow.
It is quite telling that things like the NHS were created immediately after WW2 because the people of Britain looked behind them at all the war and hardship they had endured, turned to the powers that be, and said “fuck you, pay me.”
The bones of government legitimacy lay in the social contract and a sort of mutual detente between everybody so things can run smoothly. Even capitalism, despite its constant attempts to undermine it, rely on that stability to function. Do the capitalists realize this? Probably. Will they ever learn? Most evidence points to no. Austerity marches on.
Supposedly, quite a few of the poorest britons saw their quality of life improve under the rationing system that was in place during WWII, compared to their lives prior to the war. And after the war, they were not very eager to give up that improvement and so were willing to fight for it (while there was very little chance of Britain turning soviet in the 1940s, it was still a fear that the upper class had, particularly with the red army being stationed in Germany).
