‘Balancing the books’ look goods on paper, Rishi Sunak. But it’s not so pretty on the ground | James Bloodworth

The budget to foot the coronavirus bill will inflict more miseries on the less well-off

You never want to be in debt," my grandmother used to say to me as a child. For her generation, debt equalled subservience to higher-ups. She was also a firm adherent to the Micawber principle: Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness."

But it's pretty obvious we don't always see it as wrong to get into debt - many people have mortgages, after all. Nor, sadly, is it always avoidable. The findings from a new report demonstrate as much. An analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that nearly 4m low-income households in Britain have fallen behind on rent, bills or debt payments. The report warns of a debt crisis.

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