All in this together ?

If only......

Try this thought experiment:
try to put a figure on the lowest income on which anyone (not you, of course, not you) can get by in this country.
Well, of course, 'it depends' - how old 'they' are, whether 'they' have dependants, etc.
But you can be sure of this: surviving at that level is a short-term business, week by week or even day by day. It requires fierce prioritising of spending, probably principally towards shelter, sustenance, and a dash of the vice of choice to soften the edge.
And in what 'they' do buy, 'they' will have very little choice as far as quality goes. There will be many things 'they' will seldom if ever be able to afford at all - new clothes, investment in hobbies or interests, holidays, or indeed travel, away from 'home'.
What infrastructure 'they' have will vary, according to how long 'they' have been at this level, but any failure in the infrastructure will be a major crisis, because there simply is not the financial slack to cope - the pair of shoes no longer wearable, the old washing machine throwing a fault, whatever, is a disaster.

OK. Now double that 'get by' basic figure.
You will still be contemplating an income that most people will consider modest - probably less than the average income, whatever that abused term means.
But obviously the desperate edge is already much abated. Many people at this level will have 'a proper home'. The scope for budgetting is significantly greater. It's at least beginning to be the case that 'they' do not absolutely have to go without anything they regard as essential, although the range of quality they can afford is still restricted.

Double the figure again. And you're now well into basic comfort. You may now be able to afford a property of your own; and your fate, and that of your family, is fairly securely in your own hands provided you stay in work. You have a lot of choice about most things.

But note that at this third level, four times the 'get by' basic, you are still well in the middle of whatever range covers 90% of the whole population. In a typical local authority, for instance, the chief executive may well have a gross salary of ten times the 'get by' basic. And we have probably yet to consider anyone who really regards themselves as 'rich'.

Now let's consider 'cuts'.

For someone on the 'get by' basic, there is virtually no room for manoeuvre. Each £1 they lose is likely to mean there is one more thing that they can't afford at all, and the more pounds they lose, the more certain that is to be the case.

But as you again move in imagination through the income levels, contemplating reduced incomes at every level, choices appear - options to economise, trade down rather than go without, at worst postpone rather than abandon hope of. At quite modest income levels, the sharp absolute of 'we can't have it at all' is no longer there, at least in relation to what 'we' are used to having. And well within the total (i.e. ten times 'get by' basic) range, the difference which reducing a person/household's income by, say, the amount of the 'get by' basic will make becomes a matter of detail and inflection, no more - fewer 'designer' items but no actual material deprivation.

If we were really 'all in this together', the austerity measures would require a very sharp reverse taper, from taking nothing at all from those at the bottom, to whatever is necessary from those at the top.
Perversely, what is actually proposed cuts most directly and specifically at the very bottom - restrictions to Housing Benefit, real-terms cuts to benefits and tax credits, junking thousands of low-skill jobs in the public sector (no one's idea of the good life, but the means by which many just about keep body and soul together).
If there were truly a will that we should be 'all in this together', is there any way to make it so, except by tax ? The truth is, that however much you increase the tax take from the top, they will still have enough to do what they regard as essential - which is already not the case for those at the bottom. And with the revised tax take, you would suddenly find you had bought time to make all the adjustments and re-balancings we really need in a controlled and therefore more efficient way.

I am not an economist nor in any formal sense a money man, though I do have some private experience with investments. I am just a man in his seventh decade who has always concerned himself with the life of his time, and has himself known (relatively) both poverty and plenty.
From that standpoint, I do not 'buy' the assessment of the seriousness of the deficit issue pushed by the Conservatives, and more specifically I entirely reject the facile assumption that public finances are to be run on the same lines as a private domestic budget. Even the relatively more moderate stance of the Labour Party on the issue (still typically New Labour in this) seems to me too concerned to placate the opinions of its natural opponents, not to say enemies.
This is not such a maverick position as some may think - if that includes you, please go away and read e.g. William Keegan and Will Hutton.

So I think current policy is being sold (it may not actually be conceived - that is the devil of it) on a bogus prospectus. Conversely, I believe that the conduct of public policy requires a small screwdriver and a probe, not a sledgehammer (adjustment and re-balancing as between public and private, service and production are constantly required, but sudden exaggerated actions are inherently destabilising and wasteful); and that mass un-employment and inadequate 'welfare' are a far greater danger to the stability and well-being of our society than 'the deficit'. And I certainly think to balance adjusting action in the ratio 4:1 (cuts:taxes) is calculated to make the worst of a bad job. To keep as many lives as possible safe and stable is one of the highest common goods. If we are indeed 'all in this together' ( a fine slogan currently cynically deployed) it is actually in the interests of those least affected to pay more to cushion those most disadvantaged.