The productivity of the poor: The Wire and the expropriation of the common

David Simon’s The Wire (2002–2008) focuses on Baltimore, Maryland, an American city hollowed out by the globalized economy. Simon, drawing from Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson, portrays a city where the economy has left behind blue collar workers who are trained for jobs that no longer exist. These workers, in Simon’s view, do not have a place in a post-industrial economy. This view is challenged when confronted with Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s conception of immaterial production. Under this economic model, the urban poor are responsible for creating an immaterial social product that is then expropriated by David Simon for The Wire.