Paul Krugman cites some data that many Americans who benefit from Medicare simply don't realise that it is a government programme. It is common for the British to adopt superior airs when hearing such stories, but I suspect we have a similar blind spot.
Much of the Tory Party's success in demonising people who take benefits comes from their success in portraying such people as an unsavoury underclass who take benefits as a way of living and never contribute. In fact, most people who depend on benefits are people on low pay or pensioners, not the semi-criminals that the Daily Mail would have us all believe. I have spoken to people who are themselves on benefits who very much want benefits to be cut, because they believe that are not on benefits and never will be. It is similar, but perhaps even more striking than, the similar myth that income tax is the only form of tax that counts, and that people who do not pay income tax are not taxpayers.
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