At the rate they’re going we’d be better off in prison! Imagine working 60 hours a week only to have 99% of your income stolen away!
If I put the numbers together correctly from early 90s: inmates worked ~30 hrs?/week at ~$0.25/hr (or was that /day?) for an income of <$7.50/week. If that's 1% of potential earnings outside, that's $750/week. I guess you're in the ballpark, but with that low pay comes three meals a day and a bed, however crummy those are.
(There may be a reason in this somewhere why most of the homeless are not vying to become prison inmates.)
If everybody just says "pizz on it, throw me in the slammer", would it still be prison? Sounds like it could turn into a big-azz campground to me.