A single person with no children making $22,500 before tax does not come away with $49,000 after tax and transfers. Look it up, dude.

I assume you saw the CBO distribution-of-income report and didn't actually read it. The distribution-of-income figures look at HOUSEHOLD averages. So you're talking about families with children, retirees, etc. who are getting EITC, the child tax credit, SNAP and Medicaid.

Single people without children get virtually none of those and are actually in the worst position of all because so little is available to them.

According to CBO, the lowest fifth of HOUSEHOLDS (making $20,000–$25,000) get about $45,000–50,000 in "income after transfers and taxes."

A large chunk of that ~$25,000 in average HOUSEHOLD transfers is Medicare and Medicaid, which CBO counts at the government's cost. It's not cash that the individuals actually receive. You can't take $10,000 in "value" you're receiving under Medicaid (where "value" is the government's cost) and spend it on rent or groceries.

Even worse, they've done studies on Medicaid and it turns out that the value of the transfer is skewed because the average recipient would only spend 20–50 cents per dollar of program cost on healthcare if they didn't get the transfer and purchased healthcare themselves. So that means that if you receive $10,000 in Medicaid transfers (again the value based on the government's cost), you'd really only "feel" $2,000-$5,000 in benefit in terms of your actual wellbeing.

Bottom line: single people making $22,500 before tax ARE NOT getting $49,000 "AFTER TAX AND TRANSFERS". Some families, retirees, people on disability are but the vast majority of those transfers are not cash-based, can't be spent freely, and their value is based on government cost, not the actual cost of what the recipient might spend without the transfer.