From Dwight Lee’s encyclopedia entry on “Redistribution”:
Almost without exception, academic studies and journalistic accounts of government’s effect on the well-being of the poor focus exclusively on the effectiveness of programs that actually transfer income to the poor. What does this leave out? It leaves out all the programs that transfer income away from the poor. To know the net amount the poor receive after considering transfers to and transfers from them, we need to consider all government transfer programs.
Such an examination yields a striking fact: most government transfers are not from the rich to the poor. Instead, government takes from the relatively unorganized (e.g., consumers and general taxpayers) and gives to the relatively organized (groups politically organized around common interests, such as the elderly, sugar farmers, and steel producers). The most important factor in determining the pattern of redistribution appears to be political influence, not poverty. Of the $1.07 trillion in federal transfers in 2000, only about 29 percent, or $312 billion, was means tested (earmarked for the poor). The other 71 percent—about $758 billion in 2000—was distributed with little attention to need.
Who does redistribution *really* help?
https://www.aei.org/publication/quotation-of-the-day-on-government-transfers/