Suppose there are 10 of us, and we have 10 chocolate chip cookies. Suppose we take a vote and decide that everyone should get 2 chocolate chip cookies.
We don't have enough chocolate chip cookies, so some of use have to go without. We ask for volunteers, and 5 of us volunteer to go without our 2 chocolate chip cookies today in exchange for getting 3 extra chocolate chip cookies tomorrow.
So tomorrow we need 20 chocolate chip cookies so everyone can have 2, plus 15 for the 5 people who get 3 extra. We need 35 chocolate chip cookies tommorrow, but we are unlikely to get many more than the 10 we got today.
The people who volunteered to go without their 2 chocolate chip cookies today are probably the people who are the least hungry. They are probably the people who have the most other stuff to eat. They are probably the richest people. The people who get the extra chocolate chip cookies tomorrow are the rich people.
So our plan to eat more chocolate chip cookies than we posses today makes the rich people richer tomorrow.
This is the inevitable consequence anytime the government borrows so the government can spend more money than the government has.
The only people who have money to lend are the rich people. So the government must borrow from rich people. So all payments of interest and principal must go to rich people.
Suppose the government wants to spend money to reduce poverty, but the government does not have enough votes to pass a tax increase to pay for the antipoverty program. So the government borrows money from rich people. But when the loans are due, the government must raise taxes on the poor in order to repay the loans from the rich people.
An antipoverty program which is financed by deficits helps the poor today, but makes them even poorer tomorrow. In the short term, it makes the poor richer and the rich poorer, but in the long term in makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.
The same effect can also occur in more subtle ways. For example, suppose the government wants to increase taxes on rich businessmen and use the money to help the poor. The rich businessmen oppose this, and the government is unwilling to fight the rich businessmen. So the government and the rich businessmen make a secret deal. The government increases taxes on the rich businessmen and the rich businessmen do not oppose this. At the same time, the government changes regulation so the rich businessmen have greater opportunities to enrich themselves by exploiting everyone else. The poor people are worse off because the increased exploitation hurts them more than the increased government benefits help them. But the poor people are tricked into supporting the program which hurts them because the benefits are obvious while the costs are hidden. The antipoverty program which is supposed to make the poor richer and the rich poorer actually makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Rich people can afford to take a longer term perspective than poor people. Someone who is starving must devote all his attention to finding food today. Someone who has plenty of food can think about what he is going to do after retirement.
So during debates about government policy, the rich people tend to take a long term perspective, while the poor people tend to take a short term perspective. As a result, most government social programs benefit the poor in the short term, but benefit the rich in the long term. Politicians say they are making the poor, but in reality they are hurting the poor. The harder politicians try to help the poor, the poorer the poor become. The harder the politicians try to close the gap between rich and poor, the wider the gap becomes.