It's worked in this country, and most others.
Good example - look at what the introduction of nationalised education did. Cost a little but now every kid can read, write and do sums so the type of jobs they can do are higher value.
Same with the NHS. Healthier communities make and spend more money than unhealthy ones.
There's also another issue coming soon in automation that's going to screw our kids over and we need to have a social safety net attached for this. In fact tgis is a bigger issue than climate change in how desperate it is, a bigger issue than terrorism in how fucked we are and a bigger issue than the NHS in how unprepared we are.
In the next 25 years, 30% of current jobs are no longer going to exist. Think how fun that will be for our economy when a large amount of the professional classes (it will affect computer users before tradesmen) are now out of the tax revenues. Tgis is akready happening now and nobody else is talking about it loudly ebough.