A lot of people make a good salary in office jobs doing paper shuffling addressing "issues" related to the poor.

I almost said "needs" of the poor, but the bureaucracy is bigger than paperwork dealing with poor individuals. There are also indirectly related issues like city density planning or eminent domain debates.

It's hard to break the cycle when people are making money off of you.

I wasted months of job search time when I was in relatively good conditon because I signed up for a Workforce Incentive Act scam in Berkeley. They signed peopke up and put us through their bureaucratic process just to get the WIA funding. When I made it through their process and finally got to the part where they were supposed to help me find a job, they did jack.