The Price of Need

They built a toll road on the temples where the human spirit resides,

put a fee on survival and a tariff on the turning tides.

You're worth more when you're broken than when you're clean and hale.

The surgical extraction of your future is designed to fail.

The debt is wrapped like binding wire around the vital vein,

a guaranteed percentage harvested from every enduring pain.

THE PRICE OF NEED IS OBSCENE, THE TARIFF OF EXISTENCE IS TOO STEEP;

WE PAY WITH YEARS, WE PAY WITH LIFE, SERVING THE PROFIT CREEP.

THEY CALL IT ENTERPRISE, I CALL IT SYSTEMATIC THEFT

OF DIGNITY, OF HEALTH, OF EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT LEFT.

The forms are labyrinthine paper, designed to make your efforts void;

a bureaucratic gauntlet that leaves the single parent's soul destroyed.

You watch your health charted on a screen of cold, clinical light

while unseen hands ensure you cannot sleep well through the night.

The only commodity that's truly finite is your breath,

and they found a way to tax it right up until your death.

THE PRICE OF NEED IS OBSCENE, THE TARIFF OF EXISTENCE IS TOO STEEP;

WE PAY WITH YEARS, WE PAY WITH LIFE, SERVING THE PROFIT CREEP.

THEY CALL IT ENTERPRISE, I CALL IT SYSTEMATIC THEFT

OF DIGNITY, OF HEALTH, OF EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT LEFT.