Wages and the Justice System's Brutality

Your minimum wage job literally determines how brutal prison is. It is a concept

called the Principle of Less Eligibility, and it explains why the whole system feels rigged.

Basically, for capitalism to work, the government needs to force you to

take low-paying jobs. That means welfare has to be worse than the lowest

wage, otherwise, nobody would flip burgers. But here is the

dark part. Punishment has to be worse than welfare. If prison was safer than being poor,

people might choose jail over starving. So, the misery of the lowest-paid worker

sets the absolute limit on how humane our society is allowed to be. If you want to fix