Mmm, maybe because some people keep having kids that they can't/won't support? Most people understand that bad things can happen that will up end the family finances. They are far less understanding when folks somehow have enough cash for their hair, nails, sneakers, and various bad habits (cigarettes, alcohol, etc,) but never have enough cash to actually feed their kids.
It gets really fun (and expensive) when the powers that be decide to make ALL school meals free because we don't want to embarrass the kids getting free food. A lot of which gets tossed straight into the garbage where it belongs.
It also doesn't end with free food. There's free backpacks, free school supplies, free shoes, etc. depending on what your local government is handing out. Sometimes local businesses hand out stuff to the "poor" as designated by the school system to look good.
The funny thing is the definition of poor is pretty damn fuzzy. All it takes is a tax return showing a bad year. It doesn't matter if you were making bank for the last five years and had been saving for a rainy day. It doesn't matter if you making money under the table and hid it from Uncle Sam. Somewhere in the bowels of the bureaucracy, someone is making money off making sure as many kids as possible are the "poor" list.

I agree. Youtube has a number of channels where the audio is done by AI. The best of them are sort of okay. Most of it, however, is dreadful with a very artificial voice that frequently mispronounce words and does weird things with abbreviations, acronyms, and numbers. Not to mention the whole monotone thing that even the "good" ones still have. If the future of audio books sounds anything like that, their business will die a painful death and deserve it.

I wish I had mod points.
This never should have been politicized in the first place but some folks just can't help themselves.
Personally, I'm against a vax mandate since I don't appreciate being told what to do with my body, especially when a vaccine is this new. If the CDC, big pharma, politicians, and MSM were honest, we would have been told that the first two really don't know the long-term health implications of the various vaccines but that we do realize that a certain percentage will have an adverse reaction that may or may not be severe (or fatal in rare instances). The emphasis should be that Covid is far more likely kill or cause long-term damage than the vaccines.
I'd like to add that it's damn near impossible to take a politician who puts Covid patients into nursing homes as a reliable source for anything health related.
Oh, and yes, I'm vaxxed and boosted. My choice.

But I wouldn't describe Scotland as desperately poor or without multiple regulatory institutions. Pretty sure they could avoid the "tragedy of the commons" in this instance.

Once the youngest in the extended family "aged out," one branch of my family did the Secret Santa gig. The year most of us gave and received booze was the last time gifts were exchanged.

Amazon is already moving to the nickel and dime part. They built Prime on free shipping. Now, they are encouraging you to buy now but ship later to consolidate packaging, ie., cut their costs. WholeFood delivery? Earlier this month, deliveries over $35 were free. Now it's $9.95 and I believe and additional fee if it's under $35. None of that includes the "suggested" tip. Oh, and this is being sold as a way for them to keep the item prices from rising. Amazon Prime Video? I hope you like ads. I don't want to know what they are doing to their third-party sellers.

The Kindertransport occurred before the worst of the atrocities. The Allies had a pretty good idea of what was going on early on. Did they know the full extent of it? Probably not although I suspect some segments of their governments knew long before others.

Florida is a prime example of premiums adjustments and insurance companies fleeing. Premiums are through the roof in many locations. It sucks when your insurance company packs up and leaves while you are still paying your mortgage. You will end up paying through the nose to whichever insurance company remains in your area. No insurance, no mortgage. Eventually, they won't be building in parts of Florida unless they can do it without buyers taking out a mortgage.
Florida has a lot of built quick and cheap homes from the era preceding Hurricane Andrew. The building codes have been significantly strengthened since then but there are a lot of older homes that are at high risk.
Also in Florida, mansions ON the waterfront, and fancy homes and condos on barrier "islands." You absolutely do not want to be on the waterfront during a hurricane. It takes a also special kind of idiot to build a home (fancy or not) or a high rise condo on a barrier island and you do not want to be there in a hurricane. I remember one hurricane when officials couldn't get folks to evacuate so they told the holdouts to use a permanent marker to list your name and next of kin on your body, just in case.

The end goal of modern conservatives? I detect some serious bias there unless you mean that modern conservatives are a special breed of conservatives. Yes, there are those that worship at the altar of prosperity and think that he who dies with the most stuff wins but it's not unique to either side of the political aisle. Not every conservative wants a McMansion or two (or three), a fancy new gas guzzler every two years for each person in the household, and vacations to far away places every year. There a plenty of "modern" liberals that absolutely want those things and just think that YOU shouldn't have them because, you know, gotta save the planet. For every Ed Begley, Jr., there's an asshat telling us to save the planet while globe-trotting on a jet.

It's cheap ONLY if a company already has the technical expertise to do it in house and provide training for those that will be using it. Surprise, a lot of small (and not so small) businesses don't have that expertise on staff. IT is either outsourced or handed over to the most technologically inclined person on staff, no matter how little they actually know. It the worst case scenario, a complete moron is given control of IT despite having others on staff that can at least change the fonts in a Word document. I lived through that last one and it wasn't pretty. The guy was eventually canned but we were left with a 6 figure "solution" that sat in a corner for 6 months before it was finally installed.

Have you not watched how the government reacted during a pandemic? To mask or not to mask, that is the question. The flipflops between how dare you not allow our citizens to travel to your community to don't you dare come into ours. The absurdist lists of essential vs. non-essential items where veggie seeds are non-essential in some states because "reasons." Let the folks out of jail because they might catch Covid (and then play catch and release with the habitual offenders) but lock up folks not wearing masks this week. My personal favorite was the VAMS website where it was damn near impossible to get a vaccine appointment.

More to the point, how does their pay scale (and overall compensation package) for warehouse employees compare with other companies warehouse employees (Walmart, Target, Macy's, Stop & Shop)? If the pay is significantly better, then it might be fair to say that they are expecting a significantly higher performance level.

Please mod this up. If you really want to support your charity of choice, give directly to them. You may get a tax deduction and the charity gets all the money.
Don't pat yourself on the back for using Humble Bundle, AmazonSmile, etc. and consider that you are actually supporting the charity. Sure, if you are buying from them anyway, click the little box but what goes to the charity isn't really all that much. It's not quite as bad as the fundraising firms that cold call folks (and take a huge percentage of your donation in fees) but even the UnitedWay takes a cut when you donate to a specific charity through them.

Hidden in the fine print in the terms and conditions, I'm sure you will somehow agree to hold all the above blameless should an error (or data breech) occur. Um, thanks but no thanks.

As long as it doesn't have age inappropriate material (Cardi B anyone?), is it any of business of Congress? OTA television was a bit different because the frequency was licensed by the government. Oh, noes, it's commercialized programming on YouTube Kids. Does anyone expect a company to provide FREE programming with getting a return on their investment?
If parents don't want their kids watching it, turn off the damn computer. And please get off my lawn.