How does government hurt the poor? Anything that costs the poor more money or deprives them of property hurts the poor.
High taxes hurt the poor directly, and by raising prices.
Under the current tax systems, the poor are taxed by Social Security, Medicare, Income, Property, and Sales taxes. In addition, business taxes almost double prices. Under a fair tax, the poor person would be taxed only when he buys new nonessential items.
The minimum wage hurts the poor.
The minimum wage does NOT mean the poor can buy more, no matter what political liars say. Instead, raising the minimum wage throws poor people out of work, because businesses can't afford as many jobs under the new wage. Then it raises the product prices, so the poor can't buy any more then they could before the government raised the minimum wage. Government can not possibly have the power to control the economy in this way.
Government putting itself first hurts the poor.
When poor people owe taxes, the government wrongly puts itself first. It takes all of the property of the poor away and sells it to get the money to pay the taxes. Instead, the government should not be taxing the poor at all. Greedy government doesn't care about the poor as much as it cares for its stupid self. And government is about to make poor people spend more money if they want to keep watching their TVs, with the stupid conversion to digital TV. Government is too greedy!
Government favoring creditors over the poor.
When a poor person owes a bank or creditor money, instead of spending the money to help the poor person pay the debt, the government spends the money to help the creditor take property from the poor to satisfy the debt.
Poor relief won't cover mortgages, but pays higher rents.
This is insanity caused by the liberal worship of government. Instead of using the money to pay a lower mortgage that would keep the poor person in his own house, government prohibits this use of poor relief money, but will pay a higher rent to a landlord. For some reason, liberals consider paying a mortgage payment an improper use of government funds, because it "enriches the beneficiary." But they don't see enriching a landlord by paying rent instead an improper use of government funds. This kind of government-first thinking is wacky.
Import restrictions raise prices.
The idea behind import restrictions is to keep jobs in the country. But the troublemaker is overtaxation in this country, not imports. The high taxes make it cost too much to manufacture goods in this country. So the import restrictions make the poor pay the higher prices necessary to obtain the available domestic products.
Property tax costs the poor, even if they are renting.
Property tax definitely costs the poor who own a house. And under the current government-first laws, property tax can take a poor person's house away. But the effect of property tax on rents is hidden. That truth is that all of the property tax for the unit is paid from the rent payment. There is no other source of money to pay the tax. So the tenant pays the entire property tax bill on the rental unit.
Government squandering money on expensive baubles takes money from the poor.
Government overtaxes everyone to pay for lovely baubles that nobody needs, but that legislators want. This overtaxing affects the poor through direct taxes, and indirectly through higher prices and rents caused by taxes. These baubles include fancy architecture, supporting the arts, sports and sports facilities, recreation facilities, swimming pools, ice rinks, all forms of entertainment, entertainment venues, walking trails, greenspaces, and other nonessential items. Every one of these baubles takes money from the poor.
Programs to help the poor end up hurting the poor.
Many of the programs designed to help the poor actually hurt the poor, because they lock the poor into behaviors that prevent them from getting jobs and bettering themselves. Often there are hard cutoffs that cause a poor person who gets a low-paying job to lose total income. The poor relief refuses to pay a mortgage, and is often not enough to pay rent.
The education opportunities are usually geared toward vocations that are easier to teach, rather than vocations that pay enough. Price controls in the 1970s, intended to make sure the poor could afford gasoline, caused the gasoline shortages and the gas lines when it suddenly cost more to make gasoline. And it is totally stupid to believe that government can create jobs. It has no such power. It can spend money to cause jobs to appear, but the tax money needed to do that causes more jobs to disappear elsewhere.
Schools providing cultural education instead of vocational education.
Our public education system stinks, because it is run by unions. They demand jobs and classes according to the abilities of the union members, instead of the classes needed to provide the ability to get jobs. This is because most of the people who aspire to be teachers want to teach obsolete or nonproductive subjects. Examples of these subjects include geography, history, art, music, dance, theater, sports, poetry, literature, culture, and other subjects that had high demand in the past. Most of these subjects and professions have been made obsolete by the inventions of sound recording, radio, TV, and computers. The subjects that are needed are not provided well, because the unions have equal-pay clauses, and the equal pay is not enough to keep teachers trained in math, science, and technology from taking other higher-paying jobs.
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