As much as people in North America (rightly) complain about the cost-of-living crisis in North America, the situation is much more dire in the UK. Over the winter, it was so expensive to heat houses that there needed to be warm hubs [1] where people could get warm. This was in part due to a bad energy policy exacerbated by Ukraine but things weren't great to begin with.

Salaries have been historically low compared to the US and the cost of housing and food is extroardinarily high and has only gotten worse.

Crime is an inevitable consequence of poverty. The Conservative Party however is dedicated to transferring wealth to the already-wealthy at the expense of everyone else. This pattern is being played out to varying degrees in pretty much every Western country. At some point, we as a society need to start asking "how much wealth is enough?"

Brazil eviscerated extreme poverty with the Bolsa Familia [2]. Raising the living standards of the least fortunate in our society is not only a moral imperative, it's good for quite literally everyone.

[1]: https://www.wrccrural.org.uk/services/wrcc-warm-hubs/what-ar...

[2]: https://brazilian.report/society/2023/10/27/impact-bolsa-fam...