Economically Policing Poor People for Pleasure

Social media, my which I particularly mean BlueSky at the moment, is such an odd thing. There are people on there whose posts I see fairly regularly, but who I do not follow... even though I generally like what they post. And I get the sense they are well-respected by people I do follow, so there's a second-hand positive impression. Yet I hold off on adding yet another "big account" to the list of people I follow, probably because I'm trying to resist the inundation.

Which is kind of a joke, right, since anyone who tries to read my semi-monthly BlueSky round-ups knows I've given in to the doom-scrolling.

Anyway. One of those people whose posts I see, but who I don't follow is Noah Berlatsky. I had no information about who he is until today, but it looks like he's a poet and maybe a pop culture writer? Who also has about 25,000 followers on BlueSky (and somehow follows about 5,000 people as well... for comparison, I follow about 350). 

Yesterday, Berlatsky posted this thread, clearly in the context of the current SNAP upheaval. I agree with it, and I want to save most it here:

study after study after study shows that literally just handing people money and telling them "do what you want with this" reduces homelessness, increases food security for children, makes it more likely people will find and retain jobs.

but there's always a moral panic that some poor person somewhere is spending their snap benefits in ways that allow them to get too much enjoyment out of life.

wealthy people spend money on all sorts of useless shit. Jeff Bezos paid for a monstrously expensive gaudy and ugly wedding. Trump gold plates his toilets.

people don't feel they need to police that stuff because the wealthy are supposed to be entitled to grotesque expenditure, while the poor (and especially non-white poor people) are entitled to nothing.

more, rich people feel like they're entitled to the sadistic pleasure of policing poor people. like, it's not just that they don't want poor people to buy steak.

it's that they positively enjoy the sense of power it gives them to police what people are allowed to have; to judge others; to put in place harmful policies as punishment.

hating poor people is fun. it's leisure entertainment. they love it.

This does seem to be the case, given the evidence all around us.