The state absolutely can afford a 100% take up rate. It chooses not to for ideological reasons.

The usual reality with these kinds of payments is that the downstream social costs of not paying them - the strain on emergency services, increased crime and vagrancy, and other negative economic multipliers - are much higher than the nominal sticker cost.

But the UK and US particularly run on the moral assumption that the weak and poor must be punished for being weak and poor, because you can't be weak and poor without also being immoral. It's an entirely reactive and emotional mindset.

This isn't exaggeration. This is exactly the attitude you see in regular editorials and articles from the far-right press.

Someone has to get the big stick, and it's either the disabled, the poor, immigrants, or small groups who don't fit in in other ways.