Thread by @adamjohnsonNYC

a 1000 models show housing the homeless is cheaper, preventing most “crime” w/ basic income is cheaper than prison, single payer is cheaper, etc. but precarity is the point, a frightened, on-the-edge population is more compliant & easier to extract labor and political power from

https://twitter.com/jangelooff/status/1374710573598932994

efforts to show social P&L while well intentioned dont really matter, all the money stuff is fake in any event. The political upside to carceralism & a constant state of existential fear of poverty is intrinsically valuable regardless of nominal costs which again, are fake anyway

Cruelty isn’t really the point per se, but it is a very effective, logical mechanism of conditioning a population to be politically weak and divided and to be in a constant state of gratefulness in the crumbs it gets. Providing baseline healthcare & housing removes this mechanism

The threat of instant destitution, homelessness, losing health insurance is the single greatest leverage the boss has over the worker. Losing this power —and removing the culture of precarity and fear—because it’s nominally cheaper makes zero sense from their perspective