Poverty is the Business Model
In Massachusetts today, roughly 11 percent of the workforce depends on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — food stamps — just to feed families that work. BostonGlobe.com Seventy-four percent of working-age SNAP recipients are employed. Half hold full-time jobs.
And where do they work? For giants: Amazon, Walmart — and a parade of retailers, health-care “providers,” gig-economy platforms and temp agencies that lean on low-wage labor as if it’s vapor.
Think about that. The ultra-rich — hedge-funders, private-equity barons, corporate shareholders — make corporate profits flourish. Meanwhile, the people stacking shelves, driving deliveries, cleaning floors, “caring for” the elderly or disabled — are living just above the line. Sometimes below. Then they reach for food stamps, their kid eats and the rich keep making money.
This isn’t accidental. It’s structural.
And now, with the recent turn of screws, the safety net is unraveling. New rules under the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025” — passed this July — impose work requirements even on people with disabilities, single parents, parents of teens, veterans, homeless folks: 80 hours a month or volunteer time.
The bureaucracy — verification, caseworkers, eligibility checks — becomes a narrow gate. Miss one call; lose your benefits. Miss one pay-stub, and suddenly your groceries vanish.
Corporations aren’t paying livable wages, because they don’t have to. The people who produce wealth are paid just enough to stay alive. Then the state picks up the slack in food assistance. Meanwhile, profits roll up, dividends puff out, and quarterly reports smile.
The rich get richer by keeping the poor poor – by design of incentives, of silence, of structural abandonment.
There’s nothing noble about this “job.” It’s closer to a trap. The trap of survival. The trap of cheap labor. The trap of subsidized misery.