this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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Work Reform

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[–] buzz86us@lemmy.world 1 points 17 minutes ago

How do they even tell if you're homeless? It seems like a pretty fallible conviction to ruin someone's life.. Like what if your bus got delayed?

[–] Sp00kyB00k@lemmy.world 7 points 3 hours ago

That's called slave labour. Here you go again USA.

[–] Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

If a person has a criminal conviction for homelessness, how likely they are to pass the background check with that conviction?

It feels like poor->homeless->convict->unemployable->indentured servant is the expected career transition.

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 minutes ago

It's been known for 50+ years that incarcerating a person is the most criminogenic you could do to them. It increases crime. It solves none of the problems it uses to nominally justify its existence

[–] KulunkelBoom@lemmus.org 16 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

They've just re-instituted slavery.

[–] lordkuri@lemmy.world 9 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

It never went away, they just eliminated private ownership.

[–] bob_lemon@feddit.org 5 points 5 hours ago

Prisons are privately owned, no?

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 3 points 7 hours ago

History shows the pendulum swings both ways. The fast and more violently the swing to the right, well, political physics has some incredible lessons to teach.

[–] brachiosaurus@mander.xyz 2 points 4 hours ago

Stop upvoting twitter/x posts you idiots, write the thing yourself

[–] minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago

They want all the resources of the world to serve their interests, with a little sadism on the side.

[–] ShotDonkey@lemmy.world 18 points 14 hours ago

Prison (hell #1) and homelessness (hell #2): the two whips of the capitalist state to lash us into wage labour slavery. "No underpaid job can be too bad to accept, or do you want to risk not be able paying your exorbitant rent, risk to become homeless? Sell your labour for the lowest price so some capitalist can make 2-3 times the profit of what you gain, which is bareley enough to pay another capitalist your rent." This is what the capitalist state enforces by holding up these two hells. We don't have a prison system by accident, homelessness is not a natural phenomenon. They exist by design. It's not about the money that prisons cost in comparison to what housing a homeless person costs. The money for prisons is a fair price to pay for a capitaliat state given the MUCH larger sum of money that its capitalist class can extract of us by making us obedient and doing the even shittest job for the shittest pay to suck the most possible surplus out of our work. Become communist. Sabotage. Seize the means of production. Be a grain of sand in this machine.

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 11 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, why don't these guys just stop being poor and homeless?

/s

[–] betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

Just sell some stock and buy a house, duh. Oh, hey, I've just been offered a Cabinet position. Why would a Head-Up Display need a secretary though?

[–] falynns@lemmy.world 15 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

The South loves slavery, more at 11. This is why the US should have punished the Confederacy as the treason it was instead of coddling them.

[–] PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 5 points 11 hours ago

I just wish President Grant had punished the South more during Reconstruction but it wasn’t that popular at the time unfortunately and his corrupt administration certainly did not help.

[–] Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago

The Government of Putin are masters of cheap labor. That's why the fucknuts rarely send ICE to rural red counties.

[–] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 4 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Permanently house and feed someone? $16,000 seems quite a bit too low. That might cover food alone I would imagine, depending on the person's age. More so if it's like a 30 year old less so if they are 60.

[–] doublenom@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Checked for France, cost goes between 12k€ to 17k€ per year. It includes housing, food, management.

Source here: https://www.senat.fr/rap/r20-632/r20-6326.html

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 2 points 13 hours ago

I assume they mean in Louisiana

[–] BillCheddar@lemmy.world 8 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

All of America's laws are based on what puritanical, religious losers want.

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[–] Etterra@discuss.online 7 points 16 hours ago

The post-Civil War south is why we have the prison labor system we have. Abraham Lincoln was too busy being dead to stop defacto slavery being implemented to the benefit of the loosing side.

[–] AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 6 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Not disagreeing, but can I get a source for those figures?

[–] TheLadyAugust@lemmy.world 9 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

$66,000 to incarcerate someone

https://www.vera.org/publications/the-price-of-jails-measuring-the-taxpayer-cost-of-local-incarceration

Caveat to this. It looks like the number is actually closer to 45-50ish thousand. $66,000 seems to be closer to the cost of caring for the aging incarcerated population.

$16,000 to feed and house someone

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8863642/

[–] NerdyTimesOrWhatever@lemmy.today 14 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

You mean the crime is punished with enslavement.

[–] Jspelts@lemmy.world 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

It is the deep south, they've been trying to find ways to get slavery back for 200 years now...

[–] Cataath@lemmy.world 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Louisiana State Penitentiary, aka Angola, was a state owned and operated plantation with over 600 slaves before the Civil War. It never stopped operation, only changed how the slave labor was acquired.

[–] Jspelts@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago

I don't think the acquisition process has really changed all that much. Capture a person against his will, and force him to work for free. The only thing that really changed is the label. Now it's "criminal" instead of "slave" and on the supply side they went from one skin tone to several...

[–] wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 3 points 17 hours ago

As the thirteenth amendment specifically allows.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 8 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

These numbers are going to need context.

$66,000 for how long? A year? Median across all sentences regardless of length?

If $16,000 houses AND feeds a homeless person permanently, how long exactly are we letting them live before euthanasia? There's no "permanent" when it comes to feeding or even housing, both include ongoing costs. 16 grand is a couple of years' food costs for me. More than 1, fewer than 10.

Note that I'm not arguing against housing the homeless obviously. Besides the obvious "what the fuck" factor of making homelessness a crime, incarceration by definition can't be cheaper because it involves housing, feeding AND guarding them. I just would prefer there to be more context when numbers are thrown around like that.

[–] Nouvellalia@lemmy.world 15 points 18 hours ago

Per year, per year. These are the yearly outlays for each.

[–] btsax@reddthat.com 18 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

Important to note this isn't new or restricted to red parts of the country. Vagrancy laws, laws against loitering, etc are all ways of criminalizing the poor to ensure we are all loyal wage slaves, and to a lesser extent feeding the prison-industrial complex. Many Steinbeck novels touch on this so it was a prevalent cultural touchstone in the 30s

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[–] nonentity@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 day ago (3 children)

A healthy, broadly educated population, which feels safe and secure, is incompatible with, and toxic to, conservative and authoritarian ideologies.

They need you to be sick, stupid, and scared.

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[–] Professorozone@lemmy.world 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Ummm $16k is barely above the US Federal poverty level.

[–] Alberat@lemmy.world 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

no it's 1k for the house, 2k for food, and 13k to make up bullshit on the internet

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 11 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Most homeless people just need help because they are victims of circumstance. Give them an apartment with a few months of rent paid up, a few months food and doctors visits/medical coverage, and a basic phone with a few months prepaid and they'll have enough breathing room to get back on their feet, find a job, and take over the rent on the apartment.. Assuming, of course, republican policies havent completely destroyed the job market 🙄

and that 3 months of help, and small investment, will turn them back into a working citizen paying back into the system and have them off the streets, out of shelters, and back out of the social safety net.

and its been proven multiple times that doing this is not just the morally right choice, its the financially smart choice.

But in America we don't care about doing the moral thing. We don't care about doing the financially wise thing. we don't care about doing whats right.

We care about punching down at the less fortunate and more vulnerable. Which is why systems like this will never come to fruition. Which is why homelessness which is wholly an artificially manufactured issue, will never be a solved issue.

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[–] Tidesphere@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago (2 children)

They don't care because the breakdown is:

The tax-payer is out 66k in order to imprison the homeless That 66k goes to a prison, the prison makes money The imprisoned person is enslaved to prison labor, which the prison then leases out. The prison makes money.

The prison lobbies politicians to be "tough on crime" and pass laws that criminalize more and more things instead of helping people, that way the prison will make more and more money.

The people would be happier, healthier, and pay less in taxes if we just helped people, but we never will because helping people doesn't make prisons money. Same thing for policing. Police, as an institution, did not begin as law enforcement. They began as slave catchers. Their attitude and overall goal has remained the same. The police exist to ticket and fine people wherever possible in order to generate revenue, and, when able, arrest and charge people with the goal of filling prisons with slave labor.

If you eliminate the part of the 13th amendment that says 'except as punishment for convicted crime' and make slave labor illegal period, and in fact, make it illegal for any entity anywhere to profit off of incarcerated persons, you will eliminate a metric shit ton of problems in the U.S.

[–] Flower@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago (7 children)

The prisons sue the states when not enough prisoners come in. That's the state of things.

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[–] Aquila@sh.itjust.works 59 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I would like to permenantly house and feed myself for $16k. I have cash. Tell me how

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 31 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It’s likely a room in a boarding house, and food through a volunteer kitchen - so that $16K is still being subsidised through private charities and/or local + state Government grants.

Don’t mistake me, though - I’m all for these types of programs. They’re a hell of a lot better than a swathe of people being homeless on the streets, or incarcerated in an overcrowded prison.

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[–] areakode@riskeratspizza.com 112 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Elon Musk said he'd end world hunger if that were something that could be done. The United Nations World Food Programme did the math: $6.6 billion per year. That's it! You can guess how much the world's richest man has donated toward this cause...

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 79 points 1 day ago

Last I heard he NEGATED $43.8 Billion dollars of aid by cutting USAID, causing the deaths of 4.5 Million Children around the world.

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[–] DudeImMacGyver@kbin.earth 16 points 1 day ago

Tax subsidized slavery for anyone who can't afford a home?

What a horrible state.

[–] Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago

When I was in junior high I asked someone what the difference was between a republican and a democrat. They said republicans create jobs for the homeless, while democrats just want to give them money. It didn't make much sense until about 10 years later.

But now, the fight homelessness by just making it illegal...

[–] Bluedragon012@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago

12.50$ in total to my name. I'm getting real tired of evil. Really, freaking tired. The options are dwindling.

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