Yes. Everybody will be worse off after today. Some will be considerably worse off than others.
We will all have to pay for 13 years of Labour profligacy. I have now endured four periods of Labour government and, despite thinking they could not possibly be as bad as their predessors, each has been progressively worse. The last two or three years have been the worst I have endured. Each Labour government I have witnessed has treated the paying public as complete idiots, with those making the bulk of the contributions to the economy being treated like cash cows, and fed on stale grass. Meanwhile those sitting on their backsides just see more money and resources poured at them because they are “disadvantaged”. Eventually the government runs out of other people’s money and somebody else has to clear up the mess.
Despite being told by Mr Cameron that we are “all in this together” some of us may find that we are more in it than others. I can see universal benefits such as Tax Credits, and Winter Fuel Payments being means tested, with only the most “disadvantaged” receiving them. I can see the Child Tax Credit payments (which used to be a universal allowance under PAYE before Mr Brown made his “radical” changes) being scaled back only to the “most needy”. Income Tax thresholds, it seems, will be raised (but the advantage will be clawed back - with interest - by other changes).
Until the nation gets to grips with the fact that the total Income Tax revenue is now no longer sufficient to pay the benefits bill, and that the public sector payroll headcount has increased by 6 million in the last 13 years (without much appreciable improvement in services), and we still pay money in overseas aid to China (the fastest growing economy in the world) and India (which has its own space programme) we will continue to flounder.