The Illinois Policy Institute comes up with their “10 Ways Government Hurts the Poor:”
1. Minimum Wage If you charge more for something, you sell less of it. Labor is no different than any other commodity for sale. As economist Walter Williams says, “If higher minimum wages could cure poverty, we could easily end worldwide poverty simply by telling poor nations to legislate higher minimum wages.” A higher minimum wage means fewer jobs and makes it more difficult for people to start a small business. If you tell me you’ll pay me X dollars an hour to do a job, and I say, “That’s fine,” why shouldn’t I be allowed to do so? Why not just declare that everyone has to earn at least $100,000 a year? The answer is no different at $100,000 than it is at $15,000. It is just a matter of scale.
2. Taxes Business taxes are built into a product at a number of levels along the production and distribution chain, and then sales tax is added at the end. An ever-increasing government can appear to fund its growth by “taxing the rich” and to make business “pay their fair share,” but low income consumers pay a higher percentage of their total income in taxes. All products and services include taxes even when it is not obvious. For instance, rent contains property tax. Gasoline is highly taxed, but the actual tax rate is not listed at the pump.