Should prisoners get paid minimum wage for jobs done in prison?

[Mr Khan]

SamuelRSmith said:

Mr Khan said:

That's not profiteering. Profiteering is about making money on stuff. You're talking about pork. Employees of the state can profiteer off of things like the War on Terror, but the State as a whole draws no revenue from rounding up terrorists or conducting warrantless wiretaps or what have you.

What's on earth's "the state overall"? Governments, like all other organisations, are just collections of people. Corporations don't profit. States don't profit. The people involved do.

The state overall is like "the company overall." If you're working for a nonprofit organization that does charitable work, they as a whole draw no revenue from what they do, though you personally profit. So it is with the State, whose only revenue-drawing functions are taxes, fines, interest from sovereign loans, and military weapons sales. Much of what the state does is not about profit.