Electricity "Equity": A Shocking Proposal

We have another "Dr. Zhivago Moment" on our hands according to the Mercury News today-- you know the point in the film where the socialist government drone says "It's more fair this way".  "Fair" might be the most mis-used word of this century so far and it is looking like it can hold onto that title quite easily.  Check this out from the Merc article:

PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, the three major California utilities whose services include electricity, have filed a joint proposal with the state Public Utilities Commission that sketches out proposed changes in monthly bills.

Here’s how the fixed charges would work in the PG&E service territory. The numbers are based on a four-person household:

• Households earning less than $28,000 a year would pay a fixed charge of $15 a month on their electric bills.
• Households with annual income from $28,000 to $69,000 would pay $30 a month.
• Households earning from $69,000 to $180,000 would pay $51 a month.
• Those with incomes above $180,000 would pay $92 a month.

“These are not new charges, but a restructuring of the components of providing and delivering power,” PG&E stated in a post in the Currents section of the utility’s website.

Yeah, right.  Funny I don't recall PG&E or "a qualified, independent state agency or third party responsible for verifying customers’ total household incomes" asking for my household income before.  It would probably cost them more to administer the snooping program than it would bring in.

Comments

[resident]

You already did an April Fool's Day post.

[Joe]

Nope, this one is for real although the April Fool's post is related and applicable as seen by this bit of data from the Merc:

Wealthier residents, liberated from the office by remote work, are leaving the Bay Area at a higher rate than before the pandemic — a trend that could exacerbate a dreaded economic “doom loop” for the region’s slowly recovering job centers and downtown cores.

In 2021, households earning more than $150,000 made up 32% of all those moving out of the nine-county Bay Area, up from 27.6% in 2019, according to a new analysis of census data by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.

Between 2019 and 2021, the San Francisco metro area, which includes the East Bay and Peninsula, saw its population fall 2.3%, while San Jose’s population dropped 1.9% — a collective loss of 147,000 residents.
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So why a $92/mo fixed charge? Why not $192/mo? Just wait.

[Joanne]

Yep, just like cities were first banning fireplaces only in new construction and everyone installed gas.

Then gas was banned only in new construction and guess what??

[Jennifer Pfaff]

Humm, I wonder if this is not much different than say, if Safeway Corp., for example, would come up with a sliding scale for their groceries, also considered essential. Depending on your income--For a loaf of bread people in the lower income bracket shall pay 50 cents a loaf, whereas those in a high income bracket shall pay $9 a loaf (?)

[Phinancier]

Maybe we should all be issued a government lapel pin with an RFID chip in it that has our income coded into it so every business and government agency (think the DMV) can charge a variable amount for goods and services.

[Cassandra]

Who is at fault for this craziness?!

The voters who keep voting for Democrats.

[Lemming R US]

President Newsom, of the USSR.

https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2023/04/16/marxism-california-style-new-state-law-will-lead-energy-companies-to-bill-customers-based-on-income-n732354

[Ken dulaney]

This is clearly taxation without representation. This sets a press dent where a private company gets your income so they can charge you different rates. Ok so I will eventually pay more for a pair of jeans in the future because my favorite retailer has my income from the government?

The PUC is out of control. They messed up solar by making it harder to justify despite the state yelling for climate change solutions

[Peter Garrison]

Joe-

Illegal for cities to ban gas appliances. This from the 9th circuit US Court of Appeals:

“But Judge Patrick Bumatay wrote in the 3-0 Ninth Circuit ruling that a local ordinance that bans appliances such as gas stoves "impacts the quantity of energy" they consume, which is regulated by the federal government.” CBS News

[Laura]

I'm not giving my tax returns to PGE. Is the government going to give a private company our tax returns to prove our income? Isn't that in itself illegal? I LOVE that Berkeley's gas ban was overturned yesterday. By the 9th circuit no less! What are they going to do now?

[Lemming R US]

Let's hope the ruling by the three judge panel holds up when it is appealed to an 11 judge panel and then again for whatever comes next (US Supreme Court?) The Berkeley author played this game as reported by AP

Berkeley City Councilmember Kate Harrison, who authored the 2019 ordinance, said she doesn’t know how the city council will respond, but noted that a ban on natural gas or effort to curtail the use of natural gas has spread to 70 communities in California, and even to Seattle and New York City.

“This is a movement that can’t be stopped,” she said. “They’ve conflated a 1970s regulation about the efficiency of appliances with what kind of materials can come into our house. We did not change appliances, we changed the source of fuel that can come into new buildings.”

Nice. We did not change appliances we just stopped allowing you to have the fuel so YOU have to change appliances. That passes for logic in Berkeley.

[Paloma Ave]

What an idiotic idea.

What idiots at PG&E came up with this? (Names please?)

[Joe]

If this letter to the WSJ yesterday is accurate--and it seems like it is--this is a done deal:

I couldn’t agree more with the letter “California’s Next Scheme: Redistribute Electric Bills” (June 17). Unfortunately, the changes proposed by the utility companies are mandated by Assembly Bill 205, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom a year ago. It’s a done deal, and the utility companies are simply complying with the law. Once adopted, this new billing scheme will require a whole new bureaucracy to collect and match information about personal incomes and enforce compliance.

Dennis Geyer
Martinez, CA