Alaskan Oil and Gas Leases cancelled

General Discussion
181

I will use your data on this debate.
The Syrian Arab Republic would have the highest population growth rate of 4.43% in 2021. Among the top ten fastest-growing countries/regions, nine are located in Africa and one in Asia. Seven countries have growth rates above 3%. In the 48 countries/dependent territories with a population growth rate above 2%, 45 entrants belong to Africa (37) and Asia (8) continent.

Out of 28 countries which population has shrunk between 2016 and 2020, 17 are in Europe; six are in North America, two each in Asia and Oceania, and one in South America.

The reason, I read this decades ago, is that poor countries don’t have good retirement systems and children will help in retirement.

Well now that the Democrats are allowing the men to have babies. I guess the birth rate will double.

You are right. The new Biden Middle Class.

182

Yes by raising the minimum wage .

Today, President Biden is issuing an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay a $15 minimum wage to hundreds of thousands of workers who are working on federal contracts. These workers are critical to the functioning of the federal government: from cleaning professionals and maintenance workers who ensure federal employees have safe and clean places to work, to nursing assistants who care for the nation’s veterans, to cafeteria and other food service workers who ensure military members have healthy and nutritious food to eat, to laborers who build and repair federal infrastructure.

Minimum wage in the United States

In 2021, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that incrementally raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 would benefit 17 million workers, but would also reduce employment by 1.4 million people.[11][12] It would also lift about 900,000 people out of poverty and might raise wages for 10 million more workers, cause prices to rise and overall economic output to decrease slightly, and increase the federal budget deficit by $54 billion over the next 10 years.[11][12][13][14]

An Ipsos survey in August 2020 found that support for a rise in the federal minimum wage had grown substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 72% of Americans in favor, including 62% of Republicans and 87% of Democrats.[15] A March 2021 poll by Monmouth University Polling Institute, conducted as a minimum-wage increase was being considered in Congress, found 53% of respondents supporting an increase to $15 an hour and 45% opposed.[16]

183

That is a wrong step for a capitalist system. A sign that there is to many regulations and the government has been running poorly. Minimum wages are implemented when the government has failed.
Money is just an indicator of the worth and value of any given nation’s system. Forced value is a signal our system is failing. Besides that it kills small town America. Makes half the buildings on main street empty and drives down the small town’s value which in some area will never recover. What ends up happening is the retired people now have to come out of retirement and compete and take the jobs the younger people should have because of the increased inflation caused by minimum wage. You got to start questioning the government. For example, inflation is just transitory. We will only have inflation for a short time and then costs will return to normal.

That’s not the case. Most poor people in California for example don’t and will not work, period. By working they take the risk of being removed from the government programs paying their bills. Landlords are happy to rent to people on government programs. They get moved to the front of the line.

Cheap labor is cheap because of the type of work. Skilled labor is not cheap.

What your Wikipedia post on minimum wage is not telling you is that the supply and demand for money was the main cause of minimum wage in 1933. Gold is limited. Population growth and inflation outgrew the gold supply. The government recalled all the gold. And we went off the gold standard. People did not trust the new money and minimum wage was a method to guarantee a value of the money against an hour of work. Remember the Mark was the most valued currency in the world. Including the US. And the Mark had crashed and Germany went through a period of hyper-inflation. It would take a wheelbarrow full of money to by a sack of groceries. If you left the wheelbarrow outside the store because it would not fit in the door. The wheelbarrow may be gone when you come back but the money would be dumped out. Factories would work for a daily agreed wage. And have a negotiation at lunch for the wage of the afternoon. The lifetime retirement of teachers retirement bonds in Germany was equal to one cup of coffee.
These are some of the items the people were thinking about in 1933 when Americans were forced off the gold standard. There were other laws that helped get the people back to using banks again.

184

Mike, you are sooo full of it.

Raising wages is an indication that the unregulated Capitalist system has failed, just as an unregulated Militia results in more deaths and creates a need for stricter regulation.

It’s either that or raising taxes to compensate for strain on public resources.

This is NOT supposed to be a Capitalist country. It is supposed to be a Socio-Economic system with a equitable division of natural resources that belong to all the citizens.

What makes you think oil companies have a right to the oil that is in the earth?
They bought it? So in your world “rights” are for sale?

That’s Capitalism. Quid Pro Quo!

You want a synopsis of the real world? George Carlin had one.

185

There is a small percent of people like this, and they cross all synovial ethnic and cultural lines. My guess is you don’t know any of them. You see people not working and assume they never work by choice. This is a Reagan myth.

186

read your history.

Where are you getting your information? Capitalist systems were around before coin money. You don’t have to have any regulations for a capitalist’s system.

We have reached a point where more taxes will cause a percentage of people to just give up and stop working. If we are out of money then we should start cutting programs.

Your system was not around until sociologist Max Weber in 1958. Show me one country that uses the system you are talking about.

The laws of the nations. What you don’t agree with the laws?

What we have has been given to us by over 8,000 years of trial and errors. We have the best system the world has to offer. The system works best when the civilization has high morals. More regulations can’t take the place of morals.

187

You need to send your crystal ball to the repair shop. Out of site, out of mind seems to be your thinking. Just like immigration. You have said Immigration is not problem at all because the percentage is so small. California has a terrible homelessness problem. The goal of the churches is to get the people up and going again.

You need to come to California to see for yourself. My church has two houses for homelessness. What a mess to deal with. What the bigger cities do is move the homeless to smaller towns where the rent is cheaper. All the old hotels alone old highway 66 are full of state paid renters. Just got a call yesterday. The Code Enforcement shut down a 40 room hotel in the middle of town and they had six hours to get out. There were no rooms available in town for any of them and they had to sleep outdoors last night. Homeless people have been setting up camps in the freeway easements. In the river bottom. And out in the desert brush. There is plenty of free food for the homeless. My church gives money for showers at the truck stop because we don’t have a ymca around. But the truck stops will not let them shower anymore so we are working to fix that problem. There is a homeless industry here in CA. But we don’t want to get involved. To much paperwork. We just do what we can with those who want to help themselves and can use a little help.

188

The usual dots with no connection. If they are homeless, they aren’t getting free government stuff, are they? Immigrants don’t cause homelessness. A failed capitalism does

189

No they weren’t. At best there was hoarding by squirrels for winter supply.

Greed is a typical human property, along with paper IOUs as a “means of quid pro quo exchance”, or as the NEW SCOTUS has declared, paper money is “free speech”.

Unregulated capitalism in nature is known as “parasitism” as practiced by “invasive species” and usually leads to the death of other species in the host environment.

What we have has been given to us by over 8,000 years of trial and errors. We have the best system the world has to offer. The system works best when the civilization has high morals. More regulations can’t take the place of morals.
You are so wrong. Capitalism is contrary to morals. It is the exact opposite.

In nature, symbiosis (socialism) is always beneficial to all contributors .
Witness the symbiotic relationship of pollinating insects and flowering plants, that feeds about 75 % of life on earth.

Pollinators are great!

Pollinators need you. You need pollinators.

Birds, bats, bees, butterflies, beetles, and other small mammals that pollinate plants are responsible for bringing us one out of every three bites of food. They also sustain our ecosystems and produce our natural resources by helping plants reproduce.

Pollinating animals travel from plant to plant carrying pollen on their bodies in a vital interaction that allows the transfer of genetic material critical to the reproductive system of most flowering plants – the very plants that

  • bring us countless fruits, vegetables, and nuts,
  • ½ of the world’s oils, fibers and raw materials;
  • prevent soil erosion,
  • and increase carbon sequestration

This nearly invisible ecosystem service is a precious resource that requires attention and support - - and in disturbing evidence found around the globe, is increasingly in jeopardy. Pollinator Partnership (P2) urges you know how this system supports you, and how your actions can help support healthy and sustainable pollination.

What is pollination?

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When a pollen grain moves from the anther (male part) of a flower to the stigma (female part), pollination happens. This is the first step in a process that produces seeds, fruits, and the next generation of plants. This can happen through self-pollination, wind and water pollination, or through the work of vectors that move pollen within the flower and from bloom to bloom.

Who are the pollinators?

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Birds, bats, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, wasps, small mammals, and most importantly, bees are pollinators. They visit flowers to drink nectar or feed off of pollen and transport pollen grains as they move from spot to spot.

Why are pollinators important?

Some of the many foods that rely on pollinators

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Somewhere between 75% and 95% [1] of all flowering plants on the earth need help with pollination – they need pollinators. Pollinators provide pollination services to over 180,000 different plant species and more than 1200 crops. That means that 1 out of every three bites of food you eat is there because of pollinators [2, 3]. If we want to talk dollars and cents, pollinators add 217 billion dollars to the global economy [4,5], and honey bees alone are responsible for between 1.2 and 5.4 billion dollars in agricultural productivity in the United States [6]. In addition to the food that we eat, pollinators support healthy ecosystems that clean the air, stabilize soils, protect from severe weather, and support other wildlife [7].

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THEIR STATUS?

Pollinator populations are changing. Many pollinator populations are in decline and this decline is attributed most severely to a loss in feeding and nesting habitats [8, 9]. Pollution, the misuse of chemicals, disease, and changes in climatic patterns are all contributing to shrinking and shifting pollinator populations. In some cases there isn’t enough data to gauge a response, and this is even more worrisome.

Unnaturally acquired wealth from natural resources is always detrimental to the environment and the living creatures that contribute and maintain the delicate balance.

190

Did you miss the part where I said there is a homeless industry in CA. There are organizations that deliver cooked meals to the homeless. And blankets, soap, food, cooking utensils, bus passes, tents, free cell phones. And guess who is paying for these services.

CA has 40B people. Growth rate avg of 1.1%. that’s 440,000 more people annually. In 2021 we built 30,724 units. Do the math. This year we will lose population because people want to leave CA. But the homeless population will still grow. The regulations and community lawsuits stops the building of middle class and poor class home. The million dollar plus homes are still being built.
There are 11M immigrants in CA. An apartment can rent for $2K plus. Not all the homeless are jobless. Drive I-5 from LA to San Francisco and the closer you get to SF you will see tent cities close to towns and creeks. The tents are much larger and have cars parked next to them. Last week was in downtown LA. And the block I was going to had tents going around the block on one side of the street. The same as it did five years ago.
Capitalism is not causing the homelessness. The problem is capitalism can not work because of over regulations and lawsuits. The LA to Las Vegas bullet train is done in Nev. but CA is still getting permitted. It is in year 29 of the permitting process. Does that seem right. I went to a couple permitting meetings and what a political driven process.

191

That right there should destroy your narrstive.

192

Maybe if they were making less than minimum wage. Gauging from the cars parked outside the tents. They are making more than the minimum wage. At twenty dollars an hour you can’t afford a house in many parts of California. CA minimum wage next year will be $15.50/hr.
This year the CA minimum wage is $14.50 for companies with up to 25 employees. Over 25, it is $15.00. So, the federal wage will make no different in CA.
Call this minimum wage what it is. Just like school loan forgiveness. It is the Democrats using taxpayers dollars to buy votes.

193

Then maybe we shouldn’t have a capitalist system. The minimum wage needs to be a living wage or capitalism will eventually collapse, which is what is happening now.

Capitalism shouldn’t be a governmental system, but you right, that is what is running this country currently.

Yup, capitalism does kill small town U.S.A. Walmart moves in and commerce disappears- no more mom and pop stores, no more corner grocery stores.

That’s what companies, like Walmart moving in does to a small town. It eventually has nothing, except a lot of poor people.

Yup! Qualify for AARP? Walmart will hire you, because there’s no place else to go for work.

ROFLMAO! If that were true, we’d be paying 1950 prices.

Yeah, Walmart, Amazon, NRA, Elon Musk, etc pretty much do run the government, paying congress men and women to make laws that favour them and make the common people poorer.

Let’s fix that sentence “Most poor people in California, for example, don’t or will not work for Walmart and Amazon.”

Nah, Amazon and Walmart, for example, are modern day plantation, operating under a modern day slavery system, barely paying people enough to buy food, clothes for work, barely enough for a shack, and not much else. Slaves, back in the day, were entitled to a vet if they got sick. Now, people are entitled to die on the job and many have.

It was originally to make sure people could afford a small flat, food, clothing… basic needs. Now it doesn’t cover that.

194

And what would you consider a fair minimum wage? $7.25 p/hr? 15.00 p/hr?

Opinion | The minimum wage fiasco will hit red states hardest

> Mar 3, 2021 — While a number of red states have raised their minimum wage, none (except Florida) are on track to $15. That means a lot of people in red states …
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/03/minimum-wage-hurt-red-states-brookings/

195

Again, you see the facts, but ignore the meaning. How bad of do people need to be before you help them? How starving do they need to be before you see a societal problem?

196

You only see what meets your beliefs. The fact I pointed out that in LA people are living in tents on the sidewalks now at the same place for over five years didn’t faze you. Those people are being helped by the government daily. No homeless people are starving. Homeless does not mean that they do not receive money. I know one homeless guy the government furnishes his heroin replacement drugs. They send a taxi twice a week to pick him up. Drive him 94 miles one way and wait for him to get his shot. Then drives him back to where he is camped. Almost $400 twice a week for the taxi ride. Then people get paid to deliver hot meals to this guy. A couple weeks ago the guys that had the contract to deliver meals to him got caught dumping a lot of homeless meals. It turned out they were delivering to the houses. But didn’t like going to camp sites. And the government was paying them to go to Subway and buy meals and deliver them. But the government was not checking on the deliveries to the camp sites. The government gives the homeless phones. But they have no way to charge them. Word is they sell the phones and the government just keeps replacing them. Every situation can be different. My church helped one homeless lady. She is now a school bus driver and we are helping her rent a house where her daughter and 5 grandchildren are going to live too.

197

Why would that faze me? Anymore than any other human tragedy? I’m aware of the problems. The difference with you and me is that I care about them. I don’t see their situation as some fun outing that they choose.

You talk about things that have reciepts, that are tracked and accountted for. You can put numbers and values on all of this and it’s a small percent of our budgets, well worth the returns we get. Most people end up in these situations for just a few years before getting their lives back together.

198

You mean during the Trump presidency? How does that support any of your arguments against Biden? Why are you even blaming Biden for any of this? He has pulled millions of people out of abject poverty.

Are you blaming drug addicts on Biden? C’mon man, what are you trying to say?
Government is doing too much? Government is not doing enough?

Where are you going with all of this? Is Anarchy, a free-for-all what you want?
Back to the good ole days of wild west in the name of freedom?

Are you just a complainer or do you have anything constructive to discuss? This is just becoming a waste of everybody’s time.

1 Like
199

If you are aware of what is going on. Then why would you claim they are starving?

The idea is we don’t want Americans to live like that. Like the lady bus driver we were able to partner with the Mormon church. She is still living in our church house for women. The rental house is having repairs done and will be ready at the in of the month. Her daughter will be moved out next week from Texas. These are items we can do. The government can’t. That said. When I was young would work until march for city, state, and federal taxes. The rest of the year was mine. I was working for myself. Each year you could add a couple of days on. The thinking was as you stated. “it’s a small percent of our budget”. In this case it was my budget. When I retired I was working until the end of May for the government. Now if you add the inflation tax and all the hidden taxes on all the products you buy. I bet you are working to the end of June for taxes. Now add the cost to going to work and you are working for the government more than yourself. I think mriana would agree it is almost a form of slavery. It is very hard for these people to get back on their feet. And one mistake and they are homeless again. Can’t blame them for not wanting to be a slave.
If you want to solve the problem. Stop taking so much of the money the people work for. Free countries don’t require a big government micro managing every detail. writ4u wants a government that will control your life and give you just enough to live on. That is not FREEDOM. I will never sell out mine or my family’s freedom.
Follow the Jan 6the cases. Why did they drag it out for so long. Why are the people getting their right trampled on? The thinking is when analyzing the timeline of the arrests. That most of the people arrested were already being profiled by the government. That is why the government keep giving cell phones to the homeless. To track them. Every cell phone is tracked and all data is captured. If that is the case then we better make sure the government didn’t use sociological methods on social media to set these guys up. I am trying to look at the data as an adversary against a conspiracy theory. But so far the data is pretty convincing.

200

Great. And that’s about all you can. I wish more churches would do more. Government budget for these services is very good. You keep saying to follow the money, but you don’t look how efficient government is.

Edits:
"Each year you could add a couple of days on. "
Any basic graph can show you are wrong here. Taxes have not risen steadily. And you support them going down for the people who benefit most from your tax dollar and pay the least.

“It is very hard for these people to get back on their feet.”
You want it both ways. That “these people” are given things for free, and it’s hard for them to get back on their feet because of taxes. As if there is some direct pipeline from working people to the poor. The only such pipeline is from your wallet to the people who own the factories and the shipping and the stores. 2% of it disappears to the banks when you use a bankcard or paypal. Most of it is gone before you even get paid, because they are paying less than what you produce, that’s the definition of “capital”.

"Free countries don’t require a big government micro managing every detail. "
What country are you talking about?