Perhaps I should have better stated that no country is rich by virtue of slavery. According to the ACLU[0], American prisoners produce about $11B of goods and s

Perhaps I should have better stated that no country is rich by virtue of slavery. According to the ACLU[0], American prisoners produce about $11B of goods and services a year. With the US GDP at $23T, that's a rounding error. You could not say with a straight face that the American economy depends on slavery to maintain its top-30 status. The more interesting question is whether or not the Constitution should be amended to strike that bit, or whether prison labor is a good thing or a bad thing. Insofar as it provides an incentive to imprison more people, I think it's a bad thing; but in terms of giving duly-convicted prisoners a skill they could take with them after they're released, I think it can be useful. Of course, I'm not claiming that all forms of prison labor are like that. You perhaps further imply that this system does in fact incentivize the government to imprison more people than it otherwise would; I'm not sure that's true. Some estimates[1] show that not even 1% of violent criminals in several categories are imprisoned, and I've read that the average state prisoner has ten arrests and five prior convictions before they enter the prison for the first time. If anything, it seems like policy is erring on the side of keeping fewer people in prison. [0]: https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/captive-labor-exploitation-of-incarcerated-workers https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/captive-labor-exploit... [1]: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system