Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric filed a proposal on Thursday that would install a fixed-rate electric bill system for those under the three largest power companies in the state, the Globe reported. Talk about burying the lede. The real plan is to create income-based utility billing.
Currently, utility bills are based on electricity and gas consumption. The utility companies are now proposing income-based utility billing so that higher-income earners pay for more than they use, subsidizing the rates for lower income customers.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” Karl Marx wrote in his Communist Manifesto. In a nutshell, Marx said productive, hard-working and successful people must sacrifice to less productive, and unproductive people.
The State of California, the California Legislature and California Gov. Gavin Newsom are punishing productive successful people. Again. And they are saying the quiet parts out loud.
“Human beings have choice, and some people choose to work really hard and be productive,” Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and Fossil Future said in a recent interview. “And the idea [of socialism] is: they get punished. They get limitless theoretical punishment to the extent that somebody else, deliberately or not, doesn’t succeed.”
The pilgrims learned this lesson fairly quickly when they arrived in America in 1620:
The settlers created a communal society where they received their clothing, food, and supplies from the colony’s “common stock” according to their needs. The profits of labor were divided equally rather than by what was earned through hard work.
This system quickly led to discontent: The healthy and able-bodied colonists who worked in the fields all day began to resent the colonists who performed zero labor.
After about two years of famine and disaffection, the Pilgrims finally had a meeting and abandoned the socialist system. The colony’s new system required each family to take care of themselves, and made the settlers personally responsible for their own means of survival. There was no “common stock” to provide for them. This led to the entire colony becoming more prosperous—those who earlier claimed to be infirm became motivated and industrious, with men, women, and youth alike working in the fields eager to reap the benefits of their labor. The only way for a society to prosper as a whole is through hard work and personal responsibility, not through promises of equal outcomes.
This idea for “equitable energy rates” isn’t exactly new, but it’s important to note that the Pilgrims figured out that Socialism doesn’t work 228 years before Karl Marx’s flawed Manifesto.
A 2021 report from the University of California at Berkeley recommends that the state link California’s highest-in-the-nation electricity bills to customer incomes – ie. your ability to pay.
Authors Severin Borenstein (an economist), Meredith Fowlie, and Jim Sallee of the UC Berkeley and the Energy Institute at Haas admit that California’s electricity rates are so high, lower-income households pay a larger share of their income on electricity.
California has the highest electricity rates in the country. “Those costs could rise even faster over the next decade, as utilities harden their grids against wildfires, grow their share of net-metered rooftop solar and add other costs that will be passed through to utility customers,” Next 10 reported over two years ago – a non-profit which supports “ambitious environmental goals” and “Electricity Rates for An Equitable Energy Transition.”
“But recovering those costs by charging customers by the kilowatt-hour pushes too much of the burden on those least able to pay,” so to combat this, rather than using all available energy sources to create energy abundance, the Berkeley report proposes “cutting back on the volumetric per-kilowatt-hour charges on customers’ bills and recovering the missing money through constructs tied to customers’ income.”
California is rich in natural resources which once powered the state: natural gas deposits in the Monterey Shale formation; geothermal energy, abundant rivers and waterways such as the San Joaquin River Delta and hydroelectric dams; the Pacific coastline; 85 million acres of wildlands with 17 million of those used as commercial timberland; and mines and mineral resources.
The Berkeley report revealed approximately eight million residents currently owe money to investor-owned utilities, according to a recent presentation by the California Public Utility Commission.
Berkeley’s recommendation: “Alternatively, infrastructure and public purpose investment costs could be recovered via income-based fixed charges paired with an efficient volumetric price that reflects the social marginal cost.”
And here is Berkeley’s Conclusion in full Socialist/Marxist speak:
- In California, volumetric electricity rates are used to raise revenues for climate mitigation, infrastructure investments, wildfire mitigation, etc.
- This amounts to a highly regressive tax with negative implications for both efficiency and equity. Other states and countries are, unfortunately, following California’s lead in this policy as well.
- Changing the way costs are recovered to reduce electricity rates can help ensure affordable and attractive electricity consumption as we look to rapidly increase usage on the path to decarbonization.
- Paying for most non-marginal costs through government budget or income-based fixed charges would improve equity by lightening the burden of cost recovery on households that can least afford to pay.
“Customers who can afford rooftop solar systems, behind-the-meter batteries or other distributed energy resources to offset those rising rates may be able to mitigate them, the CPUC noted. But that will leave customers without those resources on the other side of a ‘growing divide in the cost of service.’”
Borenstein wrote:
Last fall, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) began a new regulatory process to revisit the state’s net energy metering (NEM) policies for rooftop solar and other behind-the-meter generation. Since it was adopted in the 1990s, NEM has been a big factor driving residential solar adoption. For every kilowatt-hour (kWh) that a customer injects into the grid, NEM reduces one-for-one the kWhs of electricity the customer has to pay for at retail rates. Effectively, the utility is buying power from customers at the full residential retail rate, rather than the much lower wholesale market price that other suppliers are paid.
With nearly 200,000 wealthier-than-average California customers now installing solar every year, and the state even mandating them for new homes, that reckoning has arrived. The CPUC is stuck between the inequity rock of generally-poorer ratepayers continuing to subsidize rooftop solar adopters and the political-blowback hard place of phasing out NEM, which would mean paying the solar households something much closer to the wholesale price for their exports to the grid.
Californians were forced into rooftop solar when the California Legislature passed a law mandating solar on all new construction, whether homeowners wanted it or not. One of the incentives was to offer purchase of a backup battery to store extra power, allowing the consumer to sell that extra electricity back to the utility. Now, after the homeowner paid for a very expensive rooftop solar system and backup battery, the CPUC backed out of the deal.
Borenstein called this “‘perverse incentives’ created by the huge gap between the retail price and the utility’s cost of supplying additional power to the customer.”
The bottom line, and real goal of the radical environmentalists is to make electricity so expensive, homeowners will be forced to initiate self-blackouts of electric appliances during certain times of day, and electric car owners won’t be able to afford the high costs to keep them charged.
Environmentalists have no special love for electric cars – they just want everyone out of cars. So if they can make electricity so expensive that people can’t afford to drive electric cars, well then good.
And this is done by limiting energy sources rather than using an all-of-the-above approach to energy production in California: Oil, gas, coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar and wind.
If all we are allowed to use is renewable energy for electricity production – a deliberate energy shortage – statewide shortages and rolling blackouts inevitably become the new California normal. We are being conditioned to accept this as normal by some very evil leaders.
View Comments (42)
Yep, they are going full speed ahead, trying to outpace the people who can stop them-as we grow in numbers. We win by waking up everybody we possibly can-AND getting our elections hand counted. People will happily line up to volunteer to hand count the Nov 2024 ballots.
Word of the year Pretext:
"A reason or excuse given to hide the real reason for something.
That which is assumed as a cloak or means of concealment; something under cover of which a true purpose is hidden; an ostensible reason, motive, or occasion; a pretense."
We can predict their next moves. These individuals are all the same: flat, lifeless, with limited thinking capacities, all follower types decapitated with fear of thinking/acting independently of the narratives they are given-in short-lunatics.
So how do we defeat them and get their (not theirs) ideas out of Ca once and for all?
They are following in lockstep the only "gods" they know Marx, Alisnky, Cloward-Piven, WEF/UN,Agenda 30.
We are 18 months. 21 days away from the election. What do we propose to do about it?
To each according to their needs. Yup. You may get fixed rates depending on your income but the catch is they will also determine what your "needs" are and they won't be much at all (according to them). Count on it.
It’s interesting when you see that the cost of this so called pollution free energy is so damn expensive most cannot afford it. But the fix is in on it already. Just raise the price of oil and gas and eventually your cost will be competitive. Bingo! You’re in.
To the contrary, renewable energy is super cheap because you don't have to pay for the fuel to run the generator.
As economies of scale have reduced the price of these components, fossil fuels (and their complicated supply chains subject to price shocks) will *never again be able to compete*.
Unlike a coal, natural gas, or nuclear plant, renewables like solar and wind inherently have zero fuel costs. These resources are the future.
"lower-income households pay a larger share of their income on electricity."
That holds true with any necessity. I always cut back or do without if I can't afford something.
Exactly!! Why not food, water, gasoline, etc. ?? Ooops, they're probably next. Insanity.
Next? Wake up my friend. Buy some groceries.
"The latest assault on the productive in California"
Sorry, being high income is not remotely the same thing as "productive."
$5.10 for fu*king gas today. Thanks Newsom you fu*king communist
"rather than using all available energy sources to create energy abundance"
Uh... you just threw that in there and assumed it made any sense. What other sources do you suggest? Would they still meet absolutely, clearly necessary climate goals? Would they be politically feasible with NIMBY's (think: nuclear)? Wouldn't the build out still cost ratepayers money any way you look at it?
Yes we need lower electricity rates by producing more, cheaper electricity. The most likely way to do that is massively more renewable generation and grid scale storage. It meets all goals. And it is a society wide change not just the burden of ratepayers. It should be heavily subsidized by taxes instead of a pay as you go system (which is what *practically* ends up necessitating progressive pricing schemes, not some ideological agenda).
You have no idea what you're talking about, do you?
Nope, he doesn't. He's spouting moronic "climate wacko" talking points.
John,
in the article we name "natural gas deposits in the Monterey Shale formation; geothermal energy, abundant rivers and waterways such as the San Joaquin River Delta and hydroelectric dams; the Pacific coastline; 85 million acres of wildlands with 17 million of those used as commercial timberland; and mines and mineral resources," as just a few. Clean nuclear power is another.
Best I can think of for now is to share this nonsense with all of your friends...including those that are not in Ca. Ask them to share with all of their friends and incentivize them by saying this most likely will come your way if not stopped here. Also stipulate that if this takes hold what will keep "them" from doing the same with our gasoline, movie tickets, etc. God save America!
Bob, I agree, this is a very good idea for now. Blast this article out to every last person and platform you can think of. Publicize the heck out of their creepy evil plan. There may be more we can do to put the brakes on it as a practical matter, but let's start with getting it out there. Before they swallow us whole.
What a concept that we might pay our bills according to how we perceive the Government 'needs' the income. If we call just pay say, 30% of the increased bill because we don't deem they need more, then let's see how this communist thing works out...
No kidding.
This is INFURIATING. So what do we do now? Which CORRUPT entity or agency do we badger to put a stop to this? Edison? PG&E? San Diego Gas & Electric? The CPUC?
Having attended energy portfolio meetings in my ridiculous city once upon a time long ago, back when they were taking the first steps to switch over to renewables and to recklessly toss out the multi-year contract with the clean coal-fired plants (in UTAH!) you won't be surprised to hear that in the end they did exactly what they wanted to do in the first place. Didn't matter how crazy or un-do-able or expensive it was going to be. GREEN had become a religion. As you know. Strong and good arguments against it in person, by letter, by email, whatever, fell entirely on deaf ears. The "commission" led by the mayor was taking its orders directly from the local radical Marxist Sierra Club representative. I once witnessed this guy LITERALLY whispering in the mayor's ear.
By the way, what I remember about people who installed solar is that yes, some might have been richer than the average person, but most were actually status seekers; GREEN status seekers. "I'm 100% off the grid," they used to boast. A large percentage of solar was govt subsidized at the time. And as far as I know continued to be until quite recently ---- right? ---- thus those who installed it took advantage of that and weren’t necessarily rich.
And now here we are. This is a disaster. It won't go well. Obviously. Another case of these evil idiots placing us in a very bad position (with the result that utilities inevitably became more and more unaffordable for most over time) and then blaming us for what they themselves created. This was THEIR doing in the first place, whether by design or screw-up, not OURS. And now they are taking advantage of it in the most radical, unworkable way one could possibly imagine.
Would love to hear any practical suggestions for how this monster can be killed.
"We are being conditioned to accept this as normal by some very evil leaders." - The people of California have only themselves to thank for having elected those same "very evil leaders"!!!!!! - THE_MAD_BOMBER, Danbury, Connecticut
And you elected Grampy Joe Biden, right?
Californians did not vote for them. Did you learn nothing from 2020? I will also say to you, the same thing I say to people who tell me to get out of California. You can't move away from The Cult. It's international, and it's appetites are bottomless. It will pursue you. My best friend, who relocated to Tennessee, is now being reminded of this fact, much to his chagrin. What happens in the PRK, does not stay here. Seventeen states (soon to be more than twenty) have already signed binding agreements with CARB (California Air Resources Board) to enforce California's vehicle emissions standards in their own states - including electric car mandates. Your state of Connecticut became a signatory in 2004 (https://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/fuel-economy/carb4.htm).