SB 110-13: Cheaper Energy Helps the Poors Act (Tabled)

[Devout Centrist]

For those of you who do not remember, this is the text of the current law.

Needless to say, I fully oppose any effort to rollback our country's monumental achievements in environmental policy.

[Devout Centrist]

There is no evidence that gas prices in-game are high and given how well we handled the pandemic (and the fact there's no ongoing war in Europe), there's no reason to think they'd be as high as irl.

The Red-Green New Deal also does a lot more than just regulating the oil and gas industry. The New Public Works Administration provides jobs to hundreds of thousands of Atlasians and repealing this act would leave them unemployed. I think it's best to leave this law intact. Atlasia has already made significant strides in combatting global warming, let's not turn back the clock.

[Devout Centrist]

There is no evidence that gas prices in-game are high and given how well we handled the pandemic (and the fact there's no ongoing war in Europe), there's no reason to think they'd be as high as irl.

The Red-Green New Deal also does a lot more than just regulating the oil and gas industry. The New Public Works Administration provides jobs to hundreds of thousands of Atlasians and repealing this act would leave them unemployed. I think it's best to leave this law intact. Atlasia has already made significant strides in combatting global warming, let's not turn back the clock.

Can you share the link for this "Public Works Administration"? Can you offer an amendment to this bill that protects employment for these workers or suggest a transition program?

Certainly:

Section VI: Public Works

1. The Department Internal Affairs shall be instructed to create a New Public Works Administration

  a. The NPWA shall develop, administrate, maintain and oversee public building projects.

  b. The NPWA shall be led by the ranking officer for the Department of Internal Affairs.

    i. Shall there be no ranking officer for the Department Internal Affairs be vacant, these duties shall fall to the President of Atlasia.

2. The ranking officer for the Department Internal Affairs may appoint a board of NPCs to assist in the development of NPWA projects.

3. NPWA projects shall include

    a. Construction and Engineering

    b. Renewable Energy Development and Energy Efficiency Retrofitting

    c. Coding, Server Farms and Technological Development

    d. Sustainable Agriculture

    e. Civil Corps
 

4. All NPWA projects shall provide workers with the following.

  a. Pay equivalent to 10% above a "living wage" determined by residency.

  b. Full membership in a labor union.

  c. Employment benefits delegated per project.

5. The NPWA shall operate with an annual budget of $100 billion.

While the immediate purpose of the New Public Works Administration is to provide jobs to workers formerly in the oil and gas industry, it performs a number of other crucial functions:

1. It supports rural communities that do not directly benefit from oil and natural gas extraction, giving them an economic lifeline in a time of great uncertainty.

2. It provides jobs to former coal mining communities, many of which are suffering from mine closures due to economic circumstances beyond their control.

3. It benefits communities where oil and gas extraction is in decline. It may not be economically viable for companies to extract oil and gas from certain communities anymore, and the NPWA helps support those communities.

4. It helps offset the displacement already caused by private sector changes in the energy industry. Even if the Federal government were to repeal this act today, oil and gas consumption will decrease substantially over the coming decades. We must support these communities *before* their local economies takes a turn for the worse, not after.

As two of my colleagues have already offered amendments on this bill, I will let debate on their motions move forward first.

[Devout Centrist]

Can we repeal the new great society act then? Because the red new deal and red society welfare programs are duplicative and overlap.

The New Great Society Act provides universal school breakfasts and lunches, infrastructure investment, pell grant expansion, and a tuition cap - there's very little overlap with the Red Green New Deal beyond some public works spending.

[Devout Centrist]

Can we repeal the new great society act then? Because the red new deal and red society welfare programs are duplicative and overlap.

The New Great Society Act provides universal school breakfasts and lunches, infrastructure investment, pell grant expansion, and a tuition cap - there's very little overlap with the Red Green New Deal beyond some public works spending.

AN ACT
To make investments in our country and expand essential social programs

...

1. Beginning in January of 2022, individual adults who have a disposable income of less than $100,000 shall be entitled to $2,000 monthly checks.

2. The income received shall not be taxed or counted toward existing benefits.

...

This says if an individual adult makes $99K a year she gets a $2K welfare check every month. $24K a year per individual adult who makes less than $100K. Tax free. This is nuts. It is also way more generous than some make work program that was only created because Labor killed 100K jobs and caused a recession by outlawing 60% of our energy ceding the market to Russia and the Saudis. WD keeps claiming there is high inflation and gas prices on Discord. Why wouldnt we repeal the ridiculous red new deal?

I would love to have a debate on the UBI. I think it’s an interesting concept and, while I didn’t vote for this specific bill, I can understand why my colleagues made their decision.

In any case, the Red Green New Deal puts people to work and I think that’s a damn sight better than letting them go jobless. We want to build strong communities in this country and that requires putting people to work.

[Devout Centrist]

Now I'm not an expert by any means, but however long it takes for the federal government to divest itself of the shares and things it would probably be longer than 10 days. Feel free to correct me.

Yes, I believe this would also be an issue. Divesting the Federal government’s portfolio in private energy companies within that timespan would lead to chaos and potential power grid disruption.

[Devout Centrist]

Aye

[Devout Centrist]

You keep claiming hundreds of thousands of jobs are at stake but is there any evidence other than your hopes and dreams that these make works jobs actually employ hundreds of thousands? I doubt it.

The program was established by the text of the law and the law has appropriations for the program. It is a vast oversimplification, yes, but this entire game is a vast oversimplification of the Federal government.

Anyway, it wont matter because 1. Their real jobs will be coming back, 2. They will still be getting a stupidly high amount of welfare to transition back if they want to work at all, and 3. Their cost of living will come way down from the boosted supplies of energy resources which affect the price of everything.

1. Not all jobs will come back, especially as the transition to renewable energy continues. This isn’t even a guarantee irl, where many oil and gas producers have yet to fully restart extraction operations after the Pandemic.
2. Is fine, we can definitely change the UBI thresholds.
3. Most of the phaseout dates for fracking in the RGND aren’t in effect yet; I am happy to propose an amendment that pushes those back into the 2030s, but I doubt a full repeal would significantly increase production when the most significant portion of the law isn’t in effect yet.

Im also still laughing at the unscientific "we have to ban oil and gas to save the world, but also we can just buy it from Canada and that magically wont contribute to global warming." Thats such a stupid and terrible argument. It does nothing but increase energy costs for consumers.

S090210’s comments are his own. I don’t believe we will need to import much, if any foreign gas and oil as domestic consumption starts to fall. Ultimately this is a global trend and I expect other nations will follow our example as time passes. Again, I am more than happy to revisit the timeframe for the total ban on fracking or giving consumers more incentives to adopt cheaper and cleaner products (vehicles, generators, lawn mowers, etc.)

The faster we kill this dumb, evil law the better. The Red New Deal reads like a 4 year old wrote it. Was the stupid portfolio thing ever even carried out? Like you cant just pass a law saying "we hereby buy all energy companies" and that makes it so. How much was spent doing that? How much did each share cost? Was money actually spent on this in the budget? How long did it take? How was there no recession when this happened? Its almost like there are no in game consequences when its inconvenient for Labor but if Labor wants its garbage laws in place they claim 60 trillion people will die and lose their jobs based on no evidence.

We are playing a game. Every element is vastly oversimplified both for our own sanity and for people’s enjoyment (you yourself crib quite a bit of the language in your bills from existing code irl). It would be nice to have detailed information on all aspects of the economy, or to simulate the entire lawmaking process, but we can’t do that with the way things currently stand. I’m not sure that would be a desirable outcome, either. I think the bets we can do now is improve the way the GM works and get clarification on these questions in the future. I don’t want people to be left in the dark, but we need to establish processes for improvement in order to get the ball rolling.

[Devout Centrist]

Also, the New Public Works Administration should be phased out gradually.

My main concern here is that these are nonrenewable resources we're dealing with - even if this act is repealed, the wells will run dry someday. I think it's better we take proactive action now to prevent economic destitution in the future. I'd be happy to write an amendment that allows for more cooperation with the private sector so that the Federal government isn't shouldering the entire burden.

[Devout Centrist]

Amendment vote

AYE: WD, S019, Blairite, AFE, Sev (5)
NAY: Spark, WM, Muaddib, Mr. R, DeadPrez, NCY, OSR, Greg (8 )
ABSTAIN:

The S019 amendment fails and debate resumes.

I don’t think you counted the vote correctly. By my count, the vote is tied 9-9.

[Devout Centrist]

Aye

[Devout Centrist]

Nay

[Devout Centrist]

Aye