Under the reign of Justinian in Constantinople, bread and circuses were a common way to entertain and feed the people and keep their minds off how miserable they were.
Yup. This was a common practice from the late Republic well up into the Byzantine period.
However, it was almost always limited to the capital. It was a transfer of wealth not from the rich of the empire to the poor of the empire, but more from the poor of the empire outside the capital to the rich and poor in the capital. The bread dole was often not means-tested, and the free entertainment never.
BTW, in the Nika riots Justinian discovered the advantages of having your political opponents collected together in a stadium. Seal off the exits and kill ‘em all.
Sorry, clicked post too soon.
The analogy today would not be food stamps or welfare spread across the nation. It would be as if everybody in the US was taxed to provide free food and entertainment to those who lived in NYC or DC, with no such benefits for anybody outside those cities.