Somewhere someone is making money charging 10,000 times the normal price for natural gas. Who is it? How the fuck isn’t it price gouging? Texas really has no price gouging in a natural disaster laws? Really?
There’s a known name.
I hate to go all libertarian but most price gouging laws during disasters are counterproductive. I’d be fine with some for power companies, but that’s because they are effectively granted monopolies, so that’s a whole different ball of wax.
If rates were properly regulated we would not need price gouging laws.
They were properly regulated. The regulators lifted the regulations a few days ago so that consumers would bear the cost instead of the utilities.
Omg. Didn’t think about all the people who had their accounts set to auto-pay. If I got a $10,000 bill I think I’d say “see you in court” before forking over a penny.
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Griddy sounds like the capitalist version of Gritty:
Warm your house and find out
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Don’t mess with T̶e̶x̶a̶s̶ the thermostat.
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I don’t disagree with the hot take part, but the utilities should be public.
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Your utilities can be disconnected, many places have COVID related moratoriums.
Food stamps average around $150/mo, Unemployment normally $200-400/wk, more during COVID.
You’ll find that, albeit to a much smaller scale, in pretty much every American city. Homelessness is viewed as a blight on society by most here. Something to be brushed under the carpet. They are completely dehumanized. I try to give food to people I pass when I can and chat for a few seconds, and have heard some form of “thank you for treating me like a person” more than once.
Check out some stories on the “mole people” living in the tunnels under the billion dollar resorts of Las Vegas if you really want to say “wtf America”.
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The US isn’t really a first world country. A trip outside of the nice parts of cities have some of the most depressing places to live on earth. And that is like 95% of the country. The vast majority of people here have much worse standards of living than they would have in just about any first world country.
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I remember when I got my first apartment on my own in Florida, I had to give the electric company a $250 deposit that they would hold for 2 years just to turn the power on. And I moved into the apartment in May. My first bill was due something like July 2nd. I had no idea it was going to be so high because of the air conditioning. It was something like $350. So basically I paid $600 for my first month of having electric. On top of that, I wasn’t getting paid until 2-3 days later. So I asked if I could pay once I got my paycheck and they said no. I told them I was diabetic and had medication in the fridge. (I’m not diabetic but I figured it would make them show compassion. LOL me.) I was able to pay the bill but I had a negative bank account so the bank docked me $35.
But seriously, imagine if I was diabetic and had medication that needed to be kept cold? Fucking ghouls.
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Unless you’re counting empty fields, the depressing places to live in the US are nowhere near 95%.
The Mayor of DC just announced a “hot spots” type program to try to reduce gun violence in the city. In the press release they stated that 2% of the blocks in the city were the location for 41% of shootings. Not that I didn’t already know, but that really drove home for me how different my lived experience is from someone living (literally) just a walk away from me.
I’m counting all the small towns that break up the empty fields. There are tens of thousands of them.
Unless you like the MAGA shitstain lifestyle they suck. I grew up in Kansas and live in Oklahoma. I think I have a pretty good idea what flyover country is like. It is largely a miserable place to live full of racist fat opioid addicted whites.
I guess I don’t consider strip malls and ranch houses depressing.
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Many people who live here don’t really know about Skid Row. It was a nightmare down there prior to the pandemic and has presumably gotten worse. I’ve spent a fair amount of time down there through service in sobriety. Several hospitals got in a lot of trouble for literally dumping indigent patients on Skid Row. The triple threat of poverty, mental illness, and addiction is extremely difficult to meaningfully address.
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Enjoy 
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