Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

Eubanks highlights the repetitive history of class conflict in the US. Tensions between the working-class and upper-class elites have always been a feature of American identity. The first tool used to profile and identify the poor was physical separation: poorhouses erected to cordon off those in need. Eubanks argues that the adoption of automated systems in welfare administration has created a digital poorhouse that takes up the mantle of its physical predecessors.

Eubanks also uses cyclicality to argue that those who are not currently affected by automated welfare systems must work to transform them. The makeup of different social classes is constantly shifting: Most Americans will experience poverty in their lifetime, and one small ill-fated event could catapult someone from a comfortable existence to relying on assistance from social services. This means the middle classes cannot fall back on the poorhouse model of ignoring and hiding the poor to soothe their anxiety about falling into poverty themselves. Rather, they must reorient society towards justice for the poor to reverse increasing inequities that these systems have been creating.

Eubanks argues that because US history is cyclical (specifically about worker rights and welfare reform activism), the poverty gap will continue to widen unless those with more resources and power intervene.