The issues is exactly the same as with all of your examples. Profit and control.
There is enormous profit to be made from poverty, and even more than reasserting man's dominion over women, it's very much about maintaining and tightening control over the poor and keeping them in that state regardless of gender.
At the heart of the degeneration of America, there really are people who could read through Jonathan Swift's
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1444499">A Modest Proposal and come away from it only thinking: "It would never sell."
Unfortunately there are any number of "modest proposals" which have sold quite well in America (and to some degree elsewhere as well): "Three strikes and you're out" (which might make sense if limited to violent crime); Megan's Law and a whole raft of closely related legislation, which ONLY has limited utility when applied to the one in a million event of a random abduction, and are of virtually no use whatsoever for protecting the one in four children assaulted by family members, friends, and "prominent" members of communities; No public money for abortion or elective birth-control, for the health of those too "lazy" to provide for themselves; Legislation (and even constitutional protections) which elevate certain classes of "opinion" above demonstrable fact; "Papers please." in border states; OMG DRUGS!!!111!!!!!!111!; Nude body scanners and hands INSIDE your children's clothing whilst you look on impotently.
The last is the telling one. And the ultimate destination of all "Modest Proposals". Sheep like submission to any indignity.