immiserate

present singular third person immiserates · participle present immiserating · participle past immiserated · past immiserated

1. transitiveTo impoverish (someone); to make someone sink into misery.

   These regimes will favor older people and contain and immiserate the young.

   2021, Michael Harris, Stay Alive: Surviving Capitalism’s Coming Hunger Games, John Hunt Publishing, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   By far the most powerful dynamic conception of capitalism as a system wracked by unavoidable change is the classic Marxian view in which a working class is first immiserated, then disciplined, finally goaded beyond endurance by a system that systematically exploits and deceives it.

   1971 November 28, Robert L. Heilbroner, “Phase II of the Capitalist System”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   The fun, pleasurable aspect of playbor troubles scholars because it seems to suggest that playborers are not exploited; exploitation is supposed to be immiserating, not fun.

   2018 January 16, Greg Goldberg, Antisocial Media: Anxious Labor in the Digital Economy, NYU Press, →ISBN, page 51

   Higher inequality, in part the result of a real estate boom that immiserated some and enriched others, meant more wealth in the hands of the high-saving rich.

   2020, Thomas Orlik, China: The Bubble that Never Pops, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 76

   Synonyms: depauperate, destitute, pauperize, beggar, depauperate, depauperize, destitute, embeggar