ABSTRACT
One sure way, perhaps the only sure way, to guarantee that the non-poor will not partake of a service is to make it a bad service. A considerable difficulty with both increased means-testing and geographical dispersion concerns the middle classes' attitudes towards such targeting. In assessing whether this apparently inevitable beneficial involvement of the non-poor in the welfare state is actually undesirable, we need to distinguish between two sorts of considerations: pragmatic and principled. As a matter of purely pragmatic politics, there seems to be one argument for welcoming the beneficial involvement of the non-poor in the welfare state and one argument for opposing it. Leaving pragmatic politics to one side and turning to matters of high principle, there seems to be one quite wrongheaded argument saying the beneficial involvement of the non-poor in the welfare state is not at all undesirable, and two persuasive but quite distinct moral principles saying that it is.
