Aspiration? Freedom? Self-determination? The ability to escape horrible government schools? And end to the cycle of dependency?
Just out of curiosity, have you ever been poor? Really poor? I have, and I was a libertarian then as I am now. Why? Because I saw what big government was doing to my own community.
We lived in a neighborhood where most of the families were single parent households, and many of them were on welfare. My mother was also a single parent, but she was raised to believe that taking charity was an absolute last resort. So she went to school at night while working a minimum wage job, improved her condition, worked her way up the ladder, eventually bought a house and a small store and lived a fulfilling life that didn’t depend on anyone else. She wasn’t that smart, she had no connections, but she worked her ass off. And it paid off. My brother and I both worked 20-hour-per-week jobs starting in grade 7 to help make ends meet.
My grandparents lived down the street. A series of life events left them broke in their early 50’s, so they moved into a small crappy apartment and my grandfather took a job as a pump jockey at a gas station. They saved every nickel for almost 5 years, then used it for a down payment on a small decrepit farm. They built that farm into a half-million-dollar property and retired comfortably. They never took a nickel of government money.
In the meantime, my friends on welfare were trapped in a dead end. Their mothers became unemployable and spent their time sitting around watching ‘their stories’ and drinking and smoking. Some of their children got out because our public education system in Canada allows children to go to any school, so we don’t have ‘ghetto schools’ to the degree you have in the U.S. But many of them became criminals, or lazy slackers who subsequently wound up on public assistance as well.
One girl I knew had 2 kids by the time she was 20, and was intentionally screwing anyone who would ask so that she could get pregnant again, because the rules at the time said that any single mother with more than 2 children could claim welfare without the requirement to look for work. That was her holy grail - especially since her mother was raising the kids anyway. So I got a first-hand look at the unintended consequences of well-meaning legislation.
Also, when you’re poor you get to experience government at its worst. You’re the one who has to stand in endless lines to fill out government paperwork for your assistance checks. You’re the one who discovers the soft tyranny of a large bureaucracy full of people with guaranteed jobs. You’re the one who gets to experience what the police are like when dealing with the riff-raff (hint: They don’t say ‘sir’ a whole lot). You’re the one whose monthly income is dependent on the whims of politicians rather than your own work ethic and ability. This tends to make you angry and unhappy - especially when ‘community organizers’ come around to tell you how horrible your life is so they can gain political power.
What made it all tolerable for my family was the belief that in a free country you can rise to the level of your ability, and therefore poverty need not be a permanent condition. That’s what the free market offers you - the ability to rise as far as your skill and work ethic will take you. The government offers you a subsistence wage in return for a state of permanent dependency. It offers you life-crippling loans to get an ‘education’ that has been watered down by ideology and the need to pass every warm body that comes through the door.
And left-wing government promises you that if you make it out of the cycle of dependency and actually achieve something, your income will be taxed away and you will be vilified if your success takes you too far.