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

[Mr. Reactionary]

No objection to the motion to cosponsor.

This bill helps the poor by increasing the supply of critical domestic energy resources, reducing our dependence on foreign dictatorships like the Saudis and the Russians, and prevents harmful supply shocks that increase inflation. This preserves the 10% tax on oil and gas to avoid increasing the deficit. This is a wise and important move to help the poor and fight inflation and foreign dictators.

[Mr. Reactionary]

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.

The red new deal is why our gas prices are so high.

[Mr. Reactionary]

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.

WD has been claiming gas prices and inflation are super high under President Cao for weeks. How convenient that is no longer the case when needed to provide cover for an attrocious Marxist recession bill. Can Labor make up its mind on if gas prices are high or low?

The Red-Green New Deal also does a lot more than just regulating the oil and gas industry.

It doesnt regulate it. It bans it. This outrageous law literally bans natural gas fracking, oil drilling, and pipelines with literally no replacements planned. This would kill a ton of people from supply disruptions and massive price spikes thst cant be handwaved away by hilariously claiming "oh solar magically went from 2% of our grid to 99% of grid instantly just because." I guess thats why the law claims we nationalized a bunch of undisclosed private companies so that the truth wouldnt get out. If the red new deal was passed in real life we'd be in a massive depression.

The New Public Works Administration provides jobs to hundreds of thousands of Atlasians and repealing this act would leave them unemployed.

Who is it employing? People Labor put out of work in the first place. We don't even know how many are "employed" but I doubt its as many as you claim. Especially when the Labor government passed a welfare bill giving UBI to people making like $90K a year. Why would anyone work?

[Mr. Reactionary]

I also object to the amendment. Keeping the tax at all is itself already a compromise.

[Mr. Reactionary]

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?

I wouldnt worry as these people will just go back to their old jobs. This make work program was specifically for workers that Labor made unemployed by banning their jobs. This bill unbans their job. As far as transitioning Labor passed a bill giving like $30 or $40K in UBI to anyone making less than like $100K. I dont see why we need multiple welfare programs for the same workers when we are literally giving them their jobs back.

[Mr. Reactionary]

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.

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

[Mr. Reactionary]

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?

[Mr. Reactionary]

I’d be fine with revisiting the UBI and lowering the threshold to 70K-80K or thereabout. Perhaps that’s something that can be done in the budget (which sadly, the administration has yet to submit).

As for the RGND, I’m not so sure why some are so keen on killing hundreds of thousands of good paying, union jobs. The NWPA provides jobs in rural areas that have been hit hard by the pandemic and the ensuing recession. Cutting it back now would put hundreds of thousands out of work and would devastate rural Atlasia. There’s no guarantee that these people would find work in the oil and gas industry if this bill is passed, but the only thing that’s guaranteed is higher unemployment.

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. 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.

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.

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.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Nay on S019 amendment

[Mr. Reactionary]

Putting in my two cents: I have expressed willingness to change the UBI as well (which was originally called CUBI - the Children's Universal Basic Income - as a prototype to Yang-style UBI, but had only applied to families with children, with the intention of making it affordable to raise a family again.) And so I would also be willing to revisit this debate and lower the income threshold.

I would also re-legalize fracking in regulated settings while still maintaining a realistic goal of becoming carbon neutral. But, particularly for states and communities whose economies are reliant on increasingly economically unviable energy sources such as coal - and have seen their quality of living decrease as a result, long before the RGND - these transition and retraining programs are vital and shouldn't be slashed.

Then they shouldnt be in the garbage Red New Deal Act then. Step 1 should be repealing this economy killing monstrosity. Then yall can bring back individual proposals from the Red Deal separately, rather than lumping welfare money for West Virginia in with idiotic energy policies. We all know labor will hem and haw and try to stall the repeal of the draconian Red New Deal to run out the clock. If there are parts you want to bring back, bring them back in a separate bill. They shouldnt be packaged together with a ban on 60% of our energy and they shouldnt be used to stall and kill this present bill. Especially since, again, we are giving every west virginian $24K in welfare money free not counting the dozens and dozens of other benefit programs. I know the Labor MO is to just have eleventeen million programs that literally all do the same thing (spend money). That spending stacks up. Eliminating program A doesnt eliminate programs B - Q.

[Mr. Reactionary]

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.

Good news everyone. I just checked the 2021 and 2022 budgets and not a single penny was expended on the purchase of energy portfolios by the federal government. So this concern about muh grid chaos isnt an issue because the federal government never followed through with the stupid proposal to buy energy companies directly. There was no money appropriated in either the Red New Deal act or the 2021 Budget  act for the purchase of energy companies. And the 2022 budget line items for energy were identical to 2021 and didnt reference energy portfolios either. And since eminent domain requires just compensation, constitutionally you cant claim that the federal government just magically owns energy companies without paying for them. And its clear from the last 2 budgets no money was paid for them. So that is a dead wood provision that can be repealed without a phaseout time since it never actually happened.

[Mr. Reactionary]

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.

All Im saying is that Labor uses the "its just a game line" inconsistently whenever its convenient to. Yall are saying its just a game so of course Labor just passed a massively consequential red new deal without full data about the pretend economy and pretend job losses, but now OMG you cant repeal it because of the pretend job losses. We all take liberties with the game to make it work. Im fine with that. But consistency in rules is important to make the game fun too. And over the past week Ive seen Laborites claim inflation and gas prices are high because Cao is President, and yet when thill bill is introduced to bring those down Laborites are asking why we think gas prices are high. There was little interest in calculating the economic impact and unemployment when passing the red new deal but now that we wish to repeal it, thats all Labir is asking for. I think its safe to assume that repealing the red new deal reverts us to the unemployment status quo from before the red new deal was adopted.

Plus, whose to say a future GM wont reverse climate change or create nuclear fusion. I had a planned story idea to recognize nuclear fusion when I was GM that never went forward. Climate change does not have to be an assumption in game.

[Mr. Reactionary]

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.

All Im saying is that Labor uses the "its just a game line" inconsistently whenever its convenient to. Yall are saying its just a game so of course Labor just passed a massively consequential red new deal without full data about the pretend economy and pretend job losses, but now OMG you cant repeal it because of the pretend job losses. We all take liberties with the game to make it work. Im fine with that. But consistency in rules is important to make the game fun too. And over the past week Ive seen Laborites claim inflation and gas prices are high because Cao is President, and yet when thill bill is introduced to bring those down Laborites are asking why we think gas prices are high. There was little interest in calculating the economic impact and unemployment when passing the red new deal but now that we wish to repeal it, thats all Labir is asking for. I think its safe to assume that repealing the red new deal reverts us to the unemployment status quo from before the red new deal was adopted.

Plus, whose to say a future GM wont reverse climate change or create nuclear fusion. I had a planned story idea to recognize nuclear fusion when I was GM that never went forward. Climate change does not have to be an assumption in game.

I see you haven’t paid attention to anything. The important thing is getting people off of fossil fuels in order to insulate ourselves from further shocks. In the meantime, we can temporarily increase supply from nations like Norway and the UAE to drive down prices. But ultimately, this repeal is just a band-aid, and unless we truly divest from fossil fuels we will be vulnerable to these same oil shocks in the future.

Unless the GM determines a new oil deposit is discovered in Atlasia that is the largest ever found. Or that there is new technology that can suck carbon out of the air at no cost.

[Mr. Reactionary]

For Spark:

Reverting my proposed amendment to my original amendment given Mr. R's comments.

The energy divestment stuff is no longer up since none was ever obtained.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Aye

[Mr. Reactionary]

Nay.