A) Capitalism requires some poverty, requires some unemployment, to keep wages low.
B) Much of the country believes that, if you provide funds for people at the bottom, they'll get to like it there. They genuinely believe that making poverty "too comfortable" will stop people trying to do better.
C) Much of the country has been trained to resent anyone getting anything at all in welfare, has been trained to view a penny spent in welfare as a dollar stolen from them personally.
D) Much of the country still thinks in Dickensian terms, that the poor are poor because of some fault of their own, because they drink or take drugs or "don't have the habit of work" (our demonically evil DWP Sec).
E) Politicians need votes, that's true. But they need money even more so. Money buys media and media buys votes. Manipulating the masses is not difficult, not when you have limitless media. And the SCOTUS have now legalised outright bribery, giving politicians every reason to suck up to the money. And the politicians are too in love with capitalism, moralising and their own power to ever do anything about it. Bill Clinton, a Democrat, signed the bill guttign welfare, essentially saying that if you can't find a job within an arbitrary time limit, we'll let you starve.
I grew up poor. Being disabled (I'm severely mentally ill and physically crippled), I'm still poor. And I have heard all the excuses, all the moralising, all the resentment. I';m for a national minimum guaranteed income but it'll take a real, blood-in-the-streets revolution before the PtB let that happen.
This has all happened before and it will all happen again. It's the fate of all superpowers. It happened to us (the British) and it will happen to you. And unless there's either a world war or a real revolution, nothing will change.
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