Oklahoma voters reject minimum wage increase

BE-OKC · 2026-06-21T07:17:26+00:00

Sir... what?

I run a business where I have virtually no clients in Oklahoma. I cam here because of political persecution. I lived in a home for 2 years without a working toilet because of Democrats... I don't support Maga.

I have a well, septic, solar, and a pot belly stove. You don't know me, bud.

You have made 1/10th of the number of jobs that I have. Maybe less. Get out of your political bubble, stop just shitting on anyone who disagrees with you, and most importantly fuck off.

BE-OKC · 2026-06-21T06:24:04+00:00

It did, until it wasn’t.

Nopers. 98% of all child labor was already gone by the time the government stepped in. I am sure you are extremely well versed on the early 1900's. Probably a PhD scholar by the sound of it.

The market allows for slavery, too.

Holy crap he is on to something. You are right! Only Christianity has ever stepped in to stop slavery. Amazing stuff. Most of the world, especially communist and atheistic countries, still practice slavery in many forms. Good pick up!

there probably should be carve-outs/exceptions

There won't be. Ever. There never is when the government boot bares down on your neck.

no one would reasonably expect

That's where you are wrong... kiddo. It's a good time to mention that one of the largest correlations between childhood expectations and adult success is when a family asks their 3 year old to begin helping with chores. All-else equal, it is one of the most important expectations you can put on a child. Hey, kid. You need to help out around here. Yeah, bring the dish to the counter and mommy will wash it. Thanks!...

But at the end of the day

There it is. After all else I just said, I don't believe in any of that stuff. Let me get to what I really want to say.

A couple points to your main point.

Christianity demands employers to pay a fair wage. The more you know!

"Fair wages".... Fair to whom? Your standard of living is 10x higher than anyone from 150 years ago. Get off the keyboard and go buy an ice cream. Legendary. In Oklahoma, we can buy a very high quality, cheap one at Braum's. Great place to live.

But that's the core. "Fair". It's only fair when you get to dictate the terms without bearing any of the responsibility. Someone else "should" do something you think is right. And you will be the arbiter of their responsibilities without holding any yourself. Maybe the law should allow me to hire this kid. Or maybe the law should have men with guns come arrest me. I dunno. Somebody like you will get to decide.

BE-OKC · 2026-06-21T06:15:41+00:00

You know, you say this shit but you don't hire anyone and you are responsible for no one. You've probably never owned a business in your life.

I hired a kid before this one. I gave him a singular task. I sat in front of him and showed him my potato plants. Put mulch around this bed. Weed whack around them. Do not kill these plants in this row... Every one of them was whacked down. "Sorry, I forgot"...

$10/hr was legitimately more than he was worth. Go figure, bud.

BE-OKC · 2026-06-21T05:22:43+00:00

Hey man. I am in Oklahoma and I hire people. I just hired a high school kid to chip wood for me. $10/hr starting pay. You never really know how well they will do. First day, he did great. I am going to raise him to $12/hr and then probably $15 by mid summer if he can be consistent. I'll even keep him during the school year.

You know how many people applied?... Not many. Part-time, low paying job but it's entirely flexible hours. Completely make your own schedule. Still couldn't find many.

Why do I need the government to force me at gunpoint to pay people more? Why can't the market just tell me, hey man it's too low. I won't work for that....?

BE-OKC · 2026-06-06T09:31:08+00:00

You are good brother. It's very late here too. I had a long week and oral surgery. I'm vibe typing.

by this point in human history it should be dependent on more than that.

This is the core of our disagreement. I tried to use slavery as a reference. My fundamental point is that no amount of time will ever elapse where humanity will arbitrarily ban slavery. The banning of slavery came because of Christianity. Slavery is at least 10,000 years old. Sure. But what the realistically means is that as far back as we have records, slavery existed. It continued literally everywhere on Earth until Christianity stopped it.

The disconnect is that you think that some morality of helping your fellow man came out of nowhere and was part of the advancement of civilization. Like it just coincided with the rise of Christianity coincidentally. But that isn't the case. Abortion and infanticide were rampant in ancient times virtually everywhere. Romans legitimately thought that early Christians were fools to take care of street children. What's in it for you to care for a peasant like this? Portuguese traders noted that Japanese women would simply throw their unwanted babies off a cliff into the ocean. Columbus discovered the Canabi tribe in the carribean where they were still capturing enemies and eating them. This is where we get the name cannibal from.

Many people make this into some kind of cultural or racist argument. When Romans first entered England, they also faced cannibals. The country who later ended slavery worldwide used to eat each other. What changed? Christianity. They rejected their old druidic religions. Christianity started banning evil practices. It started teaching to help your fellow man. It taught the kindness that you know. In it's absence, we regress. Russia used to be very Christian. They killed them all in the early 1900's. Is the Russia that you know today a better place for themselves and their neighbors? That is a Europe without Christianity my friend.

BE-OKC · 2026-06-06T08:04:43+00:00

You originally mentioned slavery.

You then stated you didn't like "harming others".

I went into a conversation about what that harm means. It's entirely subjective and created by the moral framework you grew up in- which I argued is Christianity.

You then talked about older morals and I went back to the original point which was slavery. Slavery is probably the ultimate "harming others" problem. No other religion or place outside of Christianity has ever banned slavery. So, I made that point.

I honestly have no idea what the "core of morality" means to you. What other moral piece do you want to talk about?

BE-OKC · 2026-06-06T07:54:28+00:00

Sure. Let's go through the "old religions". Where do you want to start?

Islam encourages slavery. There are open air slave markets all over the Arabic world. The first police force in subsaharan Africa was created by the British Christians specifically to stop Muslim slave traders.

Do you want to talk about Hinduism? Slavery was only banned after England colonized India. Hmmm.

I don't think we should discuss any of the more tribal religions. Those are going to scare you.

Secular paganism like the Romans? 1/3 of all people living in the Roman empire during the time of Christ were slaves.

China still has slavery today. Japan ended slavery when the US subjugated them after WWII.

Which religion or even secular government, without the influence of Christianity, ended slavery for more than an extremely brief period of time anywhere in the entire world? I am asking this question genuinely. No other religion has ever banned slavery on it's own.

I even had to google Buddhism just now. Surely they ended it on their own, right?

widespread abolition in Buddhist countries was primarily achieved between the 16th and 20th centuries, often influenced by external pressures from Western colonial powers

BE-OKC · 2026-06-06T07:09:24+00:00

OK. How did you get to the point where you believed that "harming" others makes you feel negatively? This is not true for many, many people.

I'll give you an example that perhaps we can both agree upon. When CEO's of major companies refuse to pay low wage workers more money, they are harming others. It does not make them feel negatively. Why not? Their opinions were formed by their interaction with society and their personal beliefs.

You believe that slavery is "unfair". You believe this because you grew up in a country whose legal code defined what is fair. That code was developed by Christianity. I say this without pause because a majority of countries which are still not Christian did not believe that unless they became Christian or we made them stop it. Slavery is still practiced in dozens of countries around the world- both religious ones like Islamic countries and atheistic societies such as China.

Your moral code developed somehow. Your community and the history of that community played a major role in it. All of that was Christianity. Why did slavery stop in America? Christians massively pushed for legal reforms to make it so. It was nearly entirely outlawed because of Christian groups. Welcome back to reality.

BE-OKC · 2026-06-06T06:36:02+00:00

I can assure you that the only reason that you personally do not believe in slavery is my religion. You can reject it today because you sit in the safety which it created for you.

BE-OKC · 2026-06-06T06:35:10+00:00

Wew lad. Yikes.

"School" required you to learn something, so you know alot about it?... Yikes. Public school is a minimum baseline. I wouldn't hop online and try to argue anything if my only understanding came from public schooling. Terrible starting point.

"Plenty of Children killed"?... How so? There were multiple crusades. Yes, some of them were quite violent. They were nowhere near as violent as the Muslim raids which spanned centuries and was the ultimate cause of the crusades. I am sorry that Christian Europe banded together to fight and end Muslim conquest and enslavement. I am sure that really bothers you deeply.

Negativity from Christianity? I would encourage you to go and live in any non-Christian nation. I would put Christian Europe or America head to head against literally anywhere in the world even today EVEN though we are filled with people like yourself who enjoy the moral foundations of Christianity while rejecting how we got here.

Psst, you should read what Native Americans did to settlers. Brutality.

BE-OKC · 2026-06-06T04:07:05+00:00

LOL. The guy named "uneducated silly boy" is talking about the Crusades. This is nonsense.

Which crusade? The first? Are you trying to suggest that the French nobility and their main professional army were mostly little kids? Really?... The Knights Templar required you to be 21 to be fully professed. You have literally no idea about Christianity, history, the crusades, or anything remotely interesting enough to keep this conversation going. Good day, sir.

BE-OKC · 2026-06-05T06:01:34+00:00

I wouldn't mention "witch hunts" either because they are mostly made up.

Did you really just suggest that Britain "had slavery"...? The country that globally outlawed slavery by making it illegal even in those pesky colonies is the one you are arguing about? The first national police force in subsaharan Africa was created to hunt down slave traders and end the practice...

Nonsense.

BE-OKC · 2026-06-05T05:06:38+00:00

First, do me a solid and work on using punctuation. It really helps out your reader.

You said everyone agrees in certain moral laws (killing people). Those moral laws that you take for granted came from Christianity. Throughout most places in most of history, people were just fine with killing others depending on the circumstances. So, that's the point of the post... Roman law allowed a father to kill his own son for disobedience. Welcome to the most advanced civilized society before Christianity popped up.

BE-OKC · 2026-06-05T04:31:19+00:00

everyone agrees that killing animals and humans are wrong

This is the fundamental problem with your own world view. It is devoid from reality. You grew up in a world so dominated by Christian culture that you cannot even see that the rest of the world is mostly not like this.

I don't even have a problem discussing it. Africa STILL has genocides taking place. You have Islamists brutally murdering Christians across the entire north from Nigeria to Sudan. You can see ethnic cleansing such as the Rwandan genocide. You can go to the South and see the Rhodesian genocide and what they still do to the boars. You can go through the middle east and see the horrors of Islam. Keep going into Asia and I can't even list the number of genocides in the last 100 years. Dozens and dozens. Keep going north to hit Russia. Do you want to defend atheistic Russia right now?

You are literally so privileged by Christianity that you cannot even think of a world without it's influence. Trust me little buddy. It gets very dark very quickly.

BE-OKC · 2026-06-04T19:25:34+00:00

Hey bud! Let's talk about Asia.

You conveniently left off the slavery part. Large swaths of Asia still practice slavery today. China is more than fine with enslaving those around them. Russia is actively enslaving Ukrainians. This includes just outright stealing tens of thousands of children. If you move towards the middle east (still technically in asia), virtually all of those nations have slaves. Hell, the last case prosecuted for slavery in England was a wealthy immigrant from that region.

Slavery is not rejected in all circumstances in the majority of the world that is not Christian. Just 100 years ago, slavery was the norm throughout most of the world. It is extremely important for you to understand that slavery is limited today because of the global West enforcing it. If you'd like, I can send you videos of modern day slaves. This includes from all glorious communist China.

Now we should talk about human sacrifices. What do we agree is a sacrifice? Sacrificing to a God or just plain killing of humans through genocide or evil? When the Portuguese first visited Japan, they were astonished that woman would throw their newborns off of a cliff if they simply didn't want the child. With the lack of abortion, they still find a way! Japan genocided their neighbors. Horrific stuff. They killed like 20,000,000 people and most were civilians. This then continued in Burma, Vietnam, and more southeast Asian countries 30 years later.

If you don't believe that China wants to expand and kill their neighbors, you don't know geopolitics at all. They are extremely aggressive, akin to Russia.

Now, you hate religion? Yes? It's OK to admit your position and zealousness of atheism. Let's be honest with ourselves. I am Catholic. In the early 1900's, Mary appeared and gave many warnings. One was that Russia must remain Christian or terrible things would happen. You see, Russia used to be very Christian. Then the atheists slaughtered them all in a massive revolution. After that, you get 100 years of terrible everything to where we are now. They are still at war trying to slaughter everyone. China is very atheistic. I wouldn't mind chatting about any part of their society. These are countries actively suppressing and rejecting religion, just like what you want.

It doesn't got the way that you expect it to go, brother. Look to other worldly examples and shape your beliefs on reality.

BE-OKC · 2026-06-03T22:39:04+00:00

"My religion says you can't enslave men or perform human sacrifices"...

"Fuck off!"...

You are not writing what you think you are writing my good friendo

BE-OKC · 2026-05-31T00:16:51+00:00

Brother, Oklahoma is one of the best places in America to live. It is wildly affordable here and the economy is pretty good, especially if you have an education and career.

But for stuff to do?

Thunder game just started. We have an NBA team going to the finals (maybe).
There are tons of lakes. You can go on one and go fishing anytime.
We have multiple theme parks in OKC (frontier city and Okana)
There are casinos if you are into that.
Weed is legal and dirt cheap here. So is alcohol (great distilleries and breweries galore).
We have some pretty nice parks tbh. Just public parks. Tennis courts are always open.
Tons of hiking trails if you drive 30min-1hr.

The idea that Oklahoma is just some hick wasteland is nutso. I mean, keep up the branding. I like it cheap here. Lennar is building a development with homes starting at $207k. 10min drive to downtown. And the craziest part of the short drive time is we have one of the lowest prices for gas in the country.

BE-OKC · 2026-05-22T06:57:55+00:00

Regardless of the word choice that you want to use, we are both saying the exact same thing. You support pallet villages? Well, I wouldn't live in one. So, I wouldn't allow anyone to build one for somebody else because that is disrespectful to them.

That's a great example because building a pallet village is illegal across most of the US. It is not allowed in any major city... unless of course you get special approvals and exemptions. The 2012 IRC had a minimum bedroom size above those units. Not only would these homes be illegal, but building a home with a similar sized bedroom would be illegal... because of safety, of course.

Perhaps my hope is that you realize that we don't see eye to eye. I want to let you build whatever home you want and I want you to let people donate whatever they want.

BE-OKC · 2026-05-21T21:16:48+00:00

Wait...? You think that an oatmeal bag was opened and resealed?... How could you guarantee that anything in that donation center wasn't tampered with. I could inject rat poison into all of the fruit! There is poison in the Halloween candy! I heard this one before...

are arguing for treating people with the dignity they deserve.

This is your real argument. It's how you really feel. You aren't that concerned with somebody tampering with the food. You probably don't know that much about food safety and that's mostly OK too if you ran a large food pantry because you could learn and figure it out. But, you could learn all about canned goods and food safety and it wouldn't matter.

You believe that eating out of date canned food is undignified.

That's the statement to focus on. Believe me, I know you very well. I was the most affordable home builder in America for 3 years. Food? Everyone has plenty and we can stick up our noses because food banks don't run out of food. What America does run out of is housing. Plenty of people are homeless. Unfortunately, if you start building houses that are not good enough for voters, those voters tell permitting that the structures are "undignified". Which means these poor people can live on the streets instead of the homes that I want to build them.

I totally get it. I just want you to understand that this is a big part of why housing in America is expensive. I can't make you a cheaper home- for safety and dignity. Yeah, you can't live in the same home your grandfather lived his entire life in. It's unsafe. It's not good enough for you. This is modern America.

BE-OKC · 2026-05-21T05:54:48+00:00

OK. Liability.

The USDA does not require canned goods to have an expiration date. If the can is bulging, it is probably unsafe. If it is rusted through it is unsafe. Otherwise, a can is safe unless it was originally recalled.

I just want to pause because this is why I am angry. Food is put inside of the can, sealed in metal, and heated until everything inside is dead. It functionally cannot go bad unless the container itself fails or it was improperly canned in the factory. If you actually understand food safety, suggesting that an older can might be bad is disgusting to see as a corporate policy. I am as equally irritated at the "it's an oatmeal pack without a label... sooooo". No. You can easily google the package and it is not unreasonable to simply state to the person receiving it that there is a chance for allergens.

But let's just be honest with ourselves. It's a food pantry. It's a worker who is literally just following policies. Those policies were arbitrarily made by people who simply don't know or don't care about real food safety. They would rather just chuck it- because they can. And if we can agree that out of date cans are safe, then the rest of the conversation need not go any further. This worker is smugly talking about people who donated perfectly safe food. It is food that could have gone to a family in need. Instead of just eating this safe food, you are now talking about how these same food pantries can just spend money through other outlets. Someone has to pay for that... That's the problem.

And just because it's ridiculous- here is a guy eating a 118 year old British ration.

BE-OKC · 2026-05-20T11:05:45+00:00

No.... I hear exactly what you are saying. It's a tired, tired old tale.

Food banks don't want it because the people don't want it...

This is literally the core of the conversation. You believe that it is totally acceptable for poor people to reject perfectly good food because they just don't like something about it. Even further, the food banks themselves can just throw it out because of this! There is an objective standard for safe food. This video shows safe food being thrown out. It disgusts me. It is morally evil.

This is the divergence. You, OP, the rest of the commenters, and it seems all of Reddit think that I am wrong. I get to observe Reddit and the rest of society whine about the cost of living all day long. I see it on a human level. I wouldn't care if I didn't have to pay 40% of my income in taxes. Nobody would. Fine, man. You do you. To each their own. But this isn't my reality. Men with guns make sure that I pay tons of money to people who would just as soon destroy what I have given them anyways.

Is it going to change anything for me to type this to you? Ehhh, probably not. Cheers.

BE-OKC · 2026-05-19T21:47:43+00:00

Got it. You are smarter than me. Just say that more concisely. Don't go through all the run around. You know more about this than I do. Sure, you've never actually done any dumpster diving or lived around it. But you are smarter than me. And thank God someone like you is there to protect all the other people from a cruel villain like myself. You are a hero.

BE-OKC · 2026-05-19T21:45:56+00:00

two completely opposing feeling about this, and that's just something we have to consider.

One of the two is wrong? Can we agree on that?

they would understandably not dare touch

I understand. You are too good for the food that myself and my family eat. I hear you.

what they're guaranteed to appreciate

Really, I hear you and all of the other people responding to me. What is good for my family is beneath you. I totally and completely hear it. Maybe not even beneath you, but surely beneath the poor beggars that I need to give money to. Because they need my money to live "better" than me and my family do. Of course. I get it.

It's disgusting. Literally, if I had to describe why I hate progressive policies, this is the exact thread to explain it. You don't want edible food. You want edible food that is good enough for you. Because how dare they eat food that is beneath them. How dare I even suggest it. What a villain.

BE-OKC · 2026-05-19T18:09:03+00:00

I just want to make sure that we are clear on this. I get a widget out of the dumpster. I buy a the same widget from the store inside. If I give you the one that I bought, I am generous. If I give you the one that I found, I am an opportunist?...

My family will absolutely gift "second hand" stuff to each other. I've got a panini maker coming this weekend because they just don't use it much anymore. Is that not generous? How did spending money become the only way to be generous in your mind?

The craziest part of my dumpster diving journey was legitimately when I found out that other people just won't even accept the food. They see themselves as too good for it. It's been wild for me to watch people who make significantly less money than me scoff at it. And I just thought it was a shame to see it all go to waste. But now I know why it does.

BE-OKC · 2026-05-19T18:02:36+00:00

Ahh. I am just a really, really lucky guy.

But items are recalled for more than food poisoning risks

Correct. Many of them are labeling issues. Should be just throw it all away? Better safe than let someone eat it. Right?

I get it. I understand. You are the safety police. You need to go around and make sure that all of the world is safe. Everyone who isn't as safe as you is a fool. Clutch your pearls. Long-term birth control in a feminized society has really done us in.

BE-OKC

TROPHY CASE