this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
1419 points (99.3% liked)
Political Memes
10065 readers
2042 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
have you considered how many americans would be happy to pay to just go ahead and incarcerate poor kids right now
and they're not even factoring in how for profit prisons are literal slave labour camps.
Plus that the low wages outbid other businesses easily and are heavily subsidized by the tax payer.
According to the ACLU and the University of Chicago Law school the value of goods from involuntary prison labor in the US is about two billion annually. That’s not even a rounding error as compared to the annual US federal budget.
hi, public school worker here..it is not only legal but encouraged for districts to buy furniture, air filters, and other goods from prison labor sources. one year we even had a group of convicts come to paint the walls, they did a horrible job and people ended up with stolen money also. it blows my mind that this is acceptable.
Former public school worker here, thanks for sticking it out instead of being a quitter like me! Just curious what state you’re in? I ask cause I don’t remember that from my time teaching in Jersey
iowa, and if i had to interact with students more, i might be a former worker too, so dont feel bad. lol janitorial is fine with me after seeing what the other staff go through.
So you're saying they should have started using child prison labour decades ago?
Tho I guess that's contingent on if there will be a net return from the smaller cells & rations against the lowered productivity.
Im saying it’s not a big enough net boon to the economy that cutting it out would be a problem even from a pure numbers perspective (I feel gross even typing that out). I figure the problem is that people with political power do benefit from that two billion and they don’t want that gravy train to end.
I don't think anyone is suggesting its economically necessary. I am however suggesting that the people who want to incarcerate poor kids would probably view their indentured servitude as a good thing.
My bad, agreed nobody here is saying it. I guess I’m just trying to point out how pointless it is. I remember from my CJ classes in college that potential punishments have pretty much no impact on the likelihood of someone committing a crime, only their perceived chances of being caught, or their perceived necessity of committing said crime. It’s a shame how “Old Testament” people think things should be. Outcomes should be the most important factor.
Cruelty is the point with MAGA.
And that argument would matter if the goal were to improve the state of the budget. But it's irrelevant to the share holders in the private prison/slavery corporations and the politicians those corporations lobby/bribe. And that last group have the power to keep slavery going.
Yeah the cruelty is definitely the point for far too many. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that so many people don’t actually give a shit about the area they live in being a nice, human conducive place. Littering, gated communities, pollution, NIMBY bullshit… I could go on forever.
I know a lot of poor people who would absolutely back this measure bc their favorite politician said so
Most of them are too poor to be in a tax bracket that would "pay for it"