The post you are reporting:
One of the functions of workhouses was to reduce the poor-tax which the parishes had to pay to the poor. Services offered by workhouses in the economy, such as supplying labour for roadworks, brought in money to finance the workhouses, like paying for food, and so-by meant less burden on the parishes. People in a workhouse could use their experience to find work elsewhere, but then they would have to find a house and pay the rent, which could prove very difficult.
The inintial ideas of Common Wealth of the early sixteenth century and late in the seventeenth century never materialised, hence there was a disparity in wealth between rich and poor.
(Henry VIII kept most of the confiscated lands and riches of the monasteries for himself and his political allies, after ruining the monastery economy which was parallel and inter-active with the rest of the economy). The poor laws and the workhouses were a consequence of the dissolution policy.
Following up on PaulB's idea to bring politics in, I wonder if one day we might have a Commonwealth that offers a better and fairer deal to the people in general in our Country, where-by Commonwealth here should not be misunderstood as unity with India, but in the originally intended context of 4-5 hundred years ago, around the time of Queen Anne Boylin.