This is true even in Sweden, a country that Krugman invokes at the conclusion of his post as a model for how a sturdy-enough welfare state can more than compensate for the decline of the two-parent family.
With enough corporate welfare he could lure Electric Boat from Groton to Midland.
"In the current climate, you can't be tough enough on welfare," one Tory minister smiled.
Thanks to an alliance of nutritionists, social reformers and, funnily enough, animal welfare supporters, the practice was actively promoted.
However, in reality we know that there is not enough higher-welfare chicken available to meet the demands of the 70% of people in our poll who claim to buy it.
But is defending welfare enough, I wondered?
But some people who are poor enough to collect welfare do not want the cash, only the day care, for any number of reasons, like not wanting to use up their five-year lifetime allocation of benefits.
Even that is not enough for the welfare ranchers.
An organic terrine of Waitrose's own-label dog food, however, is 55p compared with 42p for conventional, which suggests that with enough will, higher-welfare pet food need not be prohibitively expensive.
Moreover, even people unfortunate enough to be on "welfare" or "handouts" buy from the private sector.
Between them, Whitehall, academia and NGOs have churned out enough surveys on social welfare claimants to fill a wing of the Bodleian library.
