"WHY DOESN'T THE GOVERMENT JUST GIVE EVERYONE A MILLION DOLLARS AND END POVERTY"

The first question is where would the government come up with roughly 300 trillion dollars to give everyone?

100 percent taxation of income would barely begin to raise 10 percent of the needed money.  And printing the money would create a hyper-inflationary economy, where the value of one million dollars would be nearly worthless.  And the debt markets wouldn't begin to supply the US Government the necessary money, considering the total US federal debt is currently about $10 trillion.  The government could try, but it would dry up the supply of equity and debt to private individuals and businesses.

But even saying you did raise the money through taxes, borrowing and the printing of money, the hyper inflation of goods and services would render the benefits to the US citizen meaningless.  As in Germany between the World Wars, you would see people going to the grocery with wheel barrows full of money.  As quickly as it came, the money would be gone buying the necessities of life.

And even ignoring the inflationary effects of this gift, the effect on the economy would be staggering as workers left their jobs thinking that they were financially set for life.  How many workers would bother to rent movies, deliver pizzas, sell shoes, push paper, answer to a boss, deal with a cranky customer, get out of a warm bed, etc. if they felt they didn't have to pay the bills.

So you would have business failing left and right as the supply of workers, equity and debt disappeared.  And after an inital few hours of happiness over the million dollar gift, everyone upset at how quickly it is spent on the extravegantly expensive daily necessities.

This would just lead to the first million dollars in your bank account being basically useless. A loaf of bread or pint of milk would be like $100 (you could actually do the proper maths on that by finding [the price of a loaf of bread divided by the average american income per year] multiplied by the average income plus 1 million dollars = the approximate new preice of a loaf of bread)

So basically because the cost of living would shoot up, the people who were poor would still be poor, as even with their new million dollars, they still have less.

In addition your economy would be buggered as the dollar would fall like a rock, so everyone would be worse of then when the ill-advised scheme started, not only in the US but in the 30 or so countries around the world who link their currency to the US dollar, since it is a "hard currency" and not expected to do anything crazy like this!