If it was not clear at the time, it should be obvious now.

David Cameron and George Osborne went through the General Election campaign dodging questions over their plans for £12 billion in benefits cuts because they did not dare speak the truth.

To be fair, it was a tough one to fashion into a slogan, especially when the Prime Minister was proclaiming the Tories as "the party of working people". To have added, "So we mean to impoverish 3.2 million working families and millions of their children" would have tested satire, never mind the patience of voters.

Now it can be told. Though nothing will be official until Mr Osborne delivers still another Budget, the bones of the miserable scheme are plain. While every creeping Jesus assails the Scottish Government for failing to address inequality with a tiny dose of this or that, Mr Cameron takes up the challenge. Do something about poverty? Dave's your man. How much poverty would you like?

In a speech at Runcorn on Monday, the Prime Minister made another valiant attempt to present half-truths as the whole truth. He said we must end the "ridiculous merry-go-round" by which low-earners are taxed then handed money back in benefits. He claimed he wanted to see Britain transformed from a "low wage, high tax, high welfare society to a high wage, low tax, low welfare" society.

So far, so good. It might be difficult to find many defending the kinds of need that require a benefits system, but you take the Prime Minister's point. Tax credits subsidise low pay. The big supermarket chains that cannot find it in themselves to offer a living wage, to take one example, depend on workers whose incomes are maintained by redistributed taxes.

It's a fine scam for the firms. Often - the symmetry is a thing of beauty - the wage subsidy almost matches a chain's corporation tax bill. Tesco would be a case in point. This is, as the Prime Minister rightly argues, a nonsense.

Nevertheless, something is missing from the mantra adopted by Mr Cameron and his ministers. Low taxes might be achieved, as and when the Chancellor decides to be honest about VAT. Low "welfare" is a fine idea if it means less need. (A Prime Minister determined to exempt pensions and child benefit will always have a problem with arithmetic, however.) But where are these high wages to come from?

Mr Cameron is silent on this point. His ministers are silent. There are whispers, no more, that Mr Osborne might pinch a Labour idea and offer tax breaks in his Budget to companies prepared to pay the living wage. Boris Johnson is a fan of the idea. Despite that, it might work.

But what would it entail if not the exchange of one subsidy for another? And what would ensue if not companies poring over the numbers to decide, first, which deal suited them best; secondly, the kind of pay levels they could away with if tax credits were cut?

Economists can entertain you with talk of supply and demand, wages dictated by productivity, the "reservation wage" - the money you need to make it worth getting out of bed - and the trap that forces the working poor to balance potential earnings against the loss of credits. The wood gets lost among the trees. There are plenty who will tell you pay is just a function of the market, that tax credits are dole, not a subsidy. It's a handy argument.

The Prime Minister's point for discussion, however, was "high wages", wages that eradicate the need for state help. Those are also the kind of wages - surely a sound Tory point - that would reduce the tax credit burden on the state. Mr Cameron offers the grand ambition, yet says nothing at all about how it is to be achieved. As holes in policy go, that's a big one. As a mark of political and moral failure, it comes close to matching "jam tomorrow".

There are 26.5 million households in the United Kingdom. Of these, 4.6 million receive tax credits. For the purposes of Mr Cameron's argument, you can subtract 1.4 million from the last figure, representing households with no adult in paid employment. That leaves 3.2 million working families for whom the loss of credits would be "extremely unfair", or so says the Institute of Economic Affairs, a body not often mistaken for left-wing.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), self-styled as independent, is even less cautious in its estimate of the damage if the government proceeds, as rumoured, to cut child tax credit to 2003 levels. The IFS reckons that would cost 3.7 million working households an average of £1,400 a year. Children, not for the first time under a government led by Mr Cameron, would suffer most.

By one estimate, tax credits are worth £29bn annually to British employers. Whatever bite Mr Osborne elects to take - say £5bn from the child tax credit, on IFS figures - will either be taken from the children for whom it was once intended, or dealt with - no, really - as companies rush to pay decent wages. So guess what's likely to happen.

It was Gordon Brown who first borrowed the Clinton administration's "earned income tax credit" in the 1990s to replace Family Credit, itself a replacement for the old Family Income Supplement. New Labour's idea was to put distance between itself and welfare dependency hysteria, to make work pay and perform workfare magic. In essence, it was an attempt to put a human face on Tory logic. But grant Mr Brown this much: he stuck to the idea of a supplement. Credits were never intended to replace pay.

Enter Mr Cameron. Does he think "high wages" will just materialise if credits are withdrawn? Out of interest, does he think the jobs miracle of which he boasts would have happened without tax credits? Does he have a contingency plan if 3.2 million families face catastrophe? Or is he still betting the farm on Iain Duncan Smith's Universal Credit?

How much poverty and inequality is tolerable for a Tory government? That's one of those rhetorical questions. Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne mean to hit the poorest, once again, before their slight Commons majority is gone and they are blatant in refusing to deal with the issue of fair wages. Small wonder they kept their intentions to themselves during the campaign.

The Low Pay Commission has recommended that the adult rate for the national minimum wage should rise to £6.70 in October. In January 2014, the Chancellor admitted that, given inflation, it should already have reached £7. Nevertheless, the minimum wage is a matter of law. It has not destroyed jobs, despite Tory prophecies. The UK (outside London) living wage is calculated presently at £7.85 an hour. Even Mr Cameron "supports" that.

If you can legislate for one wage, why not another? If you mean to eradicate a subsidy, you surely assume that neither worker nor employer have need of subsidy. Correct? And if your desire is a decent society, you would - of course - ensure that no child suffered. That would stand to reason.