Why are the ones often harvested the poor?

Stealing from the poor is not illegal. This is the most precise answer to the whole matter.
Try stealing from a rich person. Set up a scheme, falsify accounts, forge contracts, coax them into signing.
When the truth comes out, the police will file a case, charge with fraud, and start with three years.
If you touch a rich person's money, the law will come after you.
Try stealing from a poor person. Consumer loans, annual interest rate of 36%. Legal. Online loans with daily interest of 0.05%, legal.
Lottery commissions of fifty percent, legal.
Betel nut carcinogenic warnings printed on packaging, legal.
White wine damaging the liver written in textbooks, legal.
You cut him every day. Behind each cut stands a licensed institution, a business license, a compliance department.
The things that hurt the poor the most are none of them illegal.
Think carefully about this. Annual interest rate of 36%. You borrow ten thousand yuan, and after a year, you pay back thirteen thousand six hundred.
You use that ten thousand yuan to pay rent, not to make money. You lose three thousand six hundred. That three thousand six hundred is your monthly food expense.
You use next month's food budget to fill this hole. Next month, you have to borrow again. Borrowing again at 36%. The cycle is designed by a group of financial elites from top universities.
They sit in the top floors of office buildings, using the most advanced risk control models to calculate the maximum interest rate that the poor can bear. Just at the legal maximum. Not a penny more. Not a penny less. Legal. Precise. Continuous.
Lottery is even more ruthless. You spend two yuan to buy a ticket. One yuan of that goes into public welfare funds and issuance fees.
When you buy, you think you're betting on a five million jackpot. In reality, every two yuan you spend, one yuan, is gone at that moment.
The payout rate is fifty percent. You go to a casino to gamble on big or small, with a return rate of ninety-five percent.
Lottery is more black than a casino. But casinos are illegal. Lottery is legal.
Because casinos take from everyone. Lottery mainly takes from the poor.
Poor people buy lottery tickets. Rich people don't. Do you see the pattern?
Illegal collection methods target a mixed crowd: both rich and poor.
Legal collection methods almost entirely target the poor. The legal boundaries are precisely drawn between "mainly targeting the poor" and "also targeting the rich."
Online loans with a 36% annual interest rate, borrowed mostly by people earning only a few thousand a month. Legal.
Bank financial products crashing, causing losses to middle class and wealthy people. Not legal, and they must compensate.
P2P scams tricked a bunch of middle-class people. Not legal, and they face criminal charges.
Consumer loans have taken hundreds of millions of poor people's money. Legal. No one is prosecuted. No one is compensated.
How legal the theft feels depends on how poor you are.
The poorer you are, the more compliant the methods used to exploit you. The more compliant, the less you have to argue.
You call 12345. Customer service says the interest rate is within legal limits. You go to court. The court says you signed the contract yourself.
You complain. No one listens. Because you're poor. The voices of the poor don't reach far. When the rich are exploited, they can hire lawyers, sue, contact media, and alert regulators.
The poor can only endure. Keep paying. After paying one debt, there's another. Look at this picture from a distance. At the bottom are a group of people.
Every month, after their wages are deposited, they are simultaneously drained by a dozen legal channels.
One from online loans. One from installment payments. One from lottery outlets. One from cigarettes and alcohol.
One from delivery platform memberships. One from automatic renewal on video sites.
Every channel is legal. Behind each channel is a listed company.
In the financial reports of each listed company, part of the "revenue growth" comes from these channels siphoning money from the wages of the poor. Shareholders are pleased with the financials. Growth is healthy. Compliant. Sustainable.
Sustainable means: the poor are still alive. Still working. Still earning wages. The channels can keep extracting.
When the poor die, it’s no longer sustainable. So the interest rate is stuck at 36%. Not out of kindness.
Because above 36%, the poor can't pay back, and the channels break. 36% is the limit where the poor can still breathe. The upper limit of legal harvesting: not killing you.
But taking every drop you can spill. Behind every cut inflicted on the poor, there is a compliant company, a legal department, a user agreement reviewed by lawyers.
You sign. You agree. You do it voluntarily.