How chasing the female vote increased our taxes and the size of the state while reducing our liberties

http://www.moneyweek.com/blog/why-we-should-be-demanding-even-more-benefit-cuts-00260.aspx

Money Week, 22 October 2010 page 39
Merryn Somerset Webb's interview with Robin Angus of Personal Assets Trust

http://www.patplc.co.uk/index.php

"We wonder if it is the case that you can trace inflation in the West back to universal suffrage.  Politicians promise what they think voters will want and women voters, being society's main carers, are most likely to be promised the things that most expand the state.  Historically, it has mattered more - or been perceived by politicians to  matter more - to women that they get help looking after the young, the sick and disabled, than it is has to the men who don't do so much of this work.

So what do you do to get the female vote?  You promise more schools and hospitals.  Then you  promise universal tertiary education, tax credits for everyone, free bus passes for the over-60s and subsidised nursery care.  And  the more unaffordable the state promises, the more likely it is to have to print money to pay for it - and the more likely inflation becomes.

So there is more a horrible possibility that, while it doesn't make it their fault (it remains the fault of over-promising, power-hungry politicians.