Bring Me Your Poor…

…and we will lock them up

The government shutdown wasn’t the surprise. The surprise was what stayed funded.

While Congress played its favorite game of moral chicken, a federal judge ordered emergency funds to keep SNAP alive for another month. The country’s main food aid program almost went dark, not because we couldn’t afford it, but because the poor aren’t a political priority. Meanwhile, every prison in America stayed open, guards still worked (without pay), and every cell light stayed on.

That’s not irony. That’s design.

“We spend more to store people than to support them.”

The Illusion of Scarcity

The United States spends roughly $15,000 per person per year to provide food, housing, and healthcare subsidies to those who need them. That includes SNAP, federal rent assistance, and ACA premium credits.

The same country spends about $59,000 per person per year to incarcerate them.

So when politicians say we “can’t afford” to feed children or house veterans, what they mean is: we choose not to.

Money isn’t missing. It’s redirected.
And the direction tells you everything about the system’s ethics.

Poverty as a Managed Condition

Our safety nets aren’t weak by accident; they’re fragile by design. They come with expiration dates, income tests, and moral lectures attached. If you need help, you’re scrutinized. If you make it out, you’re forgotten.

But incarceration? That’s the one government program with guaranteed funding. Every fiscal year. No fight. No filibuster. No lapse in service.

When we help the poor, it’s a budget debate.
When we cage them, it’s a line item.

The message is consistent: we’ll spend freely to contain misery, but never to prevent it.

The Capitalism-to-Prison Pipeline

This isn’t a metaphor anymore; it’s a production line.

A system that pushes people from instability to punishment, funding increasing at every stage.

Lose a job, lose housing, lose healthcare, and each drop costs the state more to manage. Not to fix, just to manage. Poverty is a business model; incarceration is the backend infrastructure.

The economy creates instability. The state polices instability. The corporations profit from both.

“Every step down costs more, but produces nothing.”

The Question

If it costs less to care than to cage, what exactly are we buying?

We’re paying for control: over bodies, over narratives, over who deserves to survive. We’re paying for the illusion that cruelty is cheaper than compassion.

And when the next shutdown comes, the lights will go out for the hungry long before they flicker in the prisons.

That’s not policy failure. That’s policy fulfillment.

Read the full analysis on The Extinction Files →
https://endofaspecies.com/extinction-files/cheaper-to-care-than-to-cage