If you pay people to be poor, you'll never run out of poor people

Taken from that spended conservative MP from the UK, Daniel Hannan.

"For most of my life, the question of how to relieve poverty has been owned by socialists. You might vote Conservative because you believed in low taxes, strong defence, controlled immigration, free enterprise or school discipline. But if you were chiefly interested in how to improve the condition of the indigent, you'd almost certainly end up voting Labour (read: Progressive)."

"Poverty is not simply an absence of money. Rather, it is bound up with a whole set of other circumstances: lack of qualifications, demoralisation, family break-up, substance abuse, fatherlessness. It follows that you do not end poverty by giving money to the poor: a theory that British welfarism has amply demonstrated over 60 years. Only when you tackle poverty holistically will you facilitate meaningful improvement."

"Conservatives naturally grasp the connection between living in an independent state and living independently of the state. IDS has done the poor the greatest service anyone could do them: he has ensured that they will no longer be left to the Left."