Elizabeth S. Anderson on Poverty in the United States

“In Bentham's vision, the poor should be treated like criminals, forced to labor in prison for the private profit of capitalist entrepreneurs. Such a totalitarian idea might seem remote from purportedly enlightened twenty-first-century practices in liberal democracies. Yet both the criminalization of poverty, and the subjection of the criminalized poor to unpaid labor for corporate profit, exist in the United States today.”

“The overwhelming majority of Republicans think that poor people, who maybe are getting food stamps or some kind of public assistance, are lazy and life is easy for them. It’s like they’re just living in a hammock. Now, anyone who’s actually been poor knows that it’s in fact a lot of work to be poor, just getting the daily subsistence, and often they’re keeping down three part-time jobs. They can’t get full-time hours anywhere, and it’s enormously difficult just to pay for basic necessities.”