From my interactions with an awful lot of working class people, they also see themselves as apart from 'people who use benefits'. I struggle to see what the 1990's has to do with people seeing their situation as different to others.

As I understand it, the 1990's introduced 'beneficiary bashing' to NZs political discourse - the idea that a person on the benefit was basically a waste of space... My parents were beneficiaries during the 90's (and I was experiencing childhood). I don't know if there was a total change of attitude to beneficiaries in the '90s as opposed to 70's and early 80's, but my shallow reading on this suggests that this might be true. In anycase, the anti beneficiary message got through - for example the question: 'what do your parents do for a living?' inevitably induced a cringe. What A.S. sees in his dealings with the 'working class' is the continuation of the shame associated with receiving a benefit.

I can't blame them either. After ten years, the middle classes and the rest of the "rich pricks" in the top tax brackets are quite entitled to ask when they get treated as something other than a group to be exploited.

...... If you're in the top tax bracket surely you're winning?