If we let the state 'assist' poor people, then the state will inevitably - powered by the very same conservatives that oppose welfare spending, and by the same liberals who claim to love the poor - impose more and more restrictions on the lives of the poor... and of everyone else as well.
This is why I occasionally think there's some merit to a reverse income tax/basic income guarantee. Studies have shown that things are better when we don't try to put too many limits on the aid we give people.
So long as we're not willing to let people starve in the street, or more likely shoot them when they get so desperate as to commit crime, we need to have some sort of 'welfare'. By which I mean that I believe that prison should be about
reform, and part of that is that we need to have life outside of prison be better than life inside of it. In short, if you're not committing crimes, you should have the same basic benefits we give prisoners - minimal housing, food, medical care, and education. But if they're not in prison or other institution we can generally reduce that down to a simple monetary payment.
Then, once you have that universality in place, you can get rid of minimum wage. While you're at it, get rid of things like housing codes that aren't about safe housing, but 'cheap' housing. Things like minimum size requirements, restrictions on the number of occupants in a home(more is cheaper, of course), etc... Much of the reason why living expenses are so high in the USA is that we demand a fair bit of 'luxury' even at the bottom.
