While that would very much be the the rational decision to make it goes against one of the core principles of much of the discourse in the US, which is that poo

While that would very much be the the rational decision to make it goes against one of the core principles of much of the discourse in the US, which is that poor people are poor because of some character flaw or being financially irresponsible if you would have just tried hard enough you would not be poor, so why should the state help you. Rutger Bregman talks about this quite a bit in his book.