The math doesn’t math. 40 hrs a week is 160 hrs a month is 3200 dollars a month - minus about 15% for taxes and SS = 2720 /month. However, most folks get 37.5, or 3000 - 15 % equals 2700.

I would love to chat with you. I am a trans new play dramaturg in the USA. I speak basic German, and want to know what the job prospects are in Germany, as I might have to leave the country.

I have the (admittedly crazy) explanation you seek.
Tl:Dr We were sending condoms to Gaza Province in Mozambique to help prevent the spread of AIDS.

www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/202...

My dad worked for the USDA as part of the Agricultural Research Service, and part of his brief was food safety. The first time I heard the words avian flu it was in 1975, and I was 8. The adults discussed this exact scenario, but it was unlikely and there were more immediate issues to worry about.

If your farm raises chickens and cows, and you have to slaughter herds of both, the price goes up for each. So, while your Brazilian friend isn’t wrong, they’ve missed the first 3 hours of the movie and are judging based on the last 15 minutes. All typos intentional. I’m not an ag person.

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Immigrant workers are being deported and citizens demand better workihg conditions and more pay. Those conditions areb’t being met, resulting in fewer farmworkers and fewer egss being processed. This particular strain of avian flu has shown the ability to jump to cows, (and humans.) 17/?

being bred, thereby raising prices… Agsin, we known about the possibility of a catastrophic avian flu for 50 years, but it was less important than profit.
The USDA budget has been cut, resulting in fewer ag scientists focusing on a solution. The pandemic needed all epidemiologists on deck. 16/?

This has been known for 50 years. We are currently in a capitalist hell-loop. Fewer chicken breeds that give brown eggs are raised, leading to fewer available brown eggs, meaning that the price is higher, leading to fewer people buying brown eggs, fewer chicken breeds that produce brown eggs 15/?

So what does this have to do with the price of eggs? For one thing, species diversity. In the store you see white eggs and brown eggs. Different breeds of chickens lay those eggs. If there were only white-egg laying chickens, and there was an avian flu, it couid eliminate chickens altogether. 14/?

So factory farms passed on costs to offset lower profit margins even though they didn’t need to. The profit was still obscene even with the higher costs. Add into this small farmers having to sell their land to survive at the same time fracking became popular. So family farms are almost gone. 13/?

There are plenty of financial factors that come into play as well, including gas price rises, better pay and working conditions for truck drivers, higher salaries for supermarket employees, some of whom unload trucks - and the fact that coroporations are rapacious and care only about profit. 12/?

What was that message? If you can’t afford to survive as a farmer, perhaps you should find another job. Well, here’s the thing: Farners vote. If you eliminate their livelihood you lose. So the government decided to give money to small farmers, helping them survive. Trump did this. 11/?

The safety issues got bad enough that the government started fining the big corporations in order to get a baseline of quality.
At the same time, since corporate farms now provided enough food to feed the US, all financial supports were stripped from family farmers. There was a new message. 10/?

Well, the corporate farms figured out it was cheaper to pay off the inspectors than it was to make the necessary chenges. Sometimes they would even replace the inspectors with line workers who spoke Spanish but had no safety background, and tout this as progress for immigrant workers. 9/?

and were replaced by immigrants, mainly undocumented, who were in no position to complain. Many of the new workers didn’t speak English, and their supervisors spoke no Spwnieh, leading to all sorts of safety issues with the food supply. We had a looming national health crisis on our hands.
8/?

Putting aside the boutique farms for a bit, the corporate farms were unhappy that small farms were being supported, cutting into their profit margin. Since they already had economy of scale, and automation, the next move was to cut labor costs. They made working conditions worse, people left
7/?

Well, small farms couldn’t compete, so the Government cut (didn’t eliminate) the subsidies, but introduced low and no interest loans so small farmers could upgrade their equipment. We also saw the rise of boutique farms which sold mainly to high-end restaurants, and could charge higher prices. 6/?

Here’s where the path splits.
On one hand, the Government said, “Look, you sell wlk the food you can grow, lower the price for the American consumer, and we will cover you on the back end. Don’t worry, we gotcha.
At the same time, corporate farms started up, touting economy of scale.
5/?