Well, yeah. This is fully intended. It keeps the proletariat in tatters. With threats to food and lodging, they won't protest and won't rise up. It's a very effective means of control.
Bread and circuses, people.
Bread and circuses, people.
The great thing about our system is that the ruling class even make money on the bread (farm subsidies, school lunch programs designed mainly as more farm subsidies rather than as a way to feed schoolkids healthy food, more farm subsidies) and the circus (monopolistic ISPs, cable companies, media holding companies, and content aggregators, now seemingly in the process of all merging into one by gobbling each other up) parts too!