This would also greatly help with social coherence. First make living costs so high, that they are unaffordable for the underclasses, leaving them no other choice than complete reliance on the state payouts. Then make subsidies conditional, tiered, assigned on sufficiently complicated rules (as a side effect this would improve employment opportunities is public sector). And finally, whenever serfs would choose to misbehave, there wouldn't even be a need to intimidate - just dangle a possibility of freezing to death in winter.