Quit making these accusations. This sort of thing is pretty common when two or more people post at the SDMB, we see it all the time.
Lynn
For the Straight Dope
If you don’t mind paying a few extra dollars, then pay a few extra dollars. Talk is cheap. Amazingly, there are an awful lot of wealthy bleeding hearts.
How about this? The gas company can put together a fund to provide free utilities for those who can’t afford utilities. People can make voluntary donations to that fund, tax deductible even.
Win win, right there - the poor are helped, and no one is forced to subsidize anyone.
Thoughts?
I think the most simple and elegent solution would be to simply cover all basic necessities with tax-dollars. Heat, water, and health care. Any abuse of these services would be minor in comparison to the benefits, IMHO.
Aw hell and damn.
That last post was me, not the 'lucinator.
You’d be surprised at how much abuse people can manage, even of simple things. Buildings that supply heat in with the rent generally wind up with lots of open windows in the middle of winter. If you pay your own heat, you don’t waste it like that.
The reality is that when people ‘can’t afford’ their bills, it’s usually because they refuse to live an affordable lifestyle. They blow their money on crap and expect others to pitch in to cover the gap. I know a woman who’s living in a brand new condo with a plywood floor. Why? because she didn’t like the builder’s carpet and now “can’t afford” to buy new carpet. Of course, she can afford the $1,000 washing machine, motorcycle, time share, etc, etc. She can afford it just fine, she just makes stupid decision after stupid decision, throwing away what money she had.
In this particular case, though, I’d bet that Manny got it in one, this isn’t a customer problem, it’s an Accounts Receivable problem, that they’re passing off on their paying customers.
You smarmy jackass. How dare you presume to know what my basic needs are. How about I decide what yours are. That okay by you?
If you want to flip the bill for the deadbeats, then knock your socks off. But why should anyone be forced into giving money to this charity?
Because…I forgot! Yes, I am a horrible person who deserves to be on the street because she forgot to pay a twelve dollar bill once. Excuse me while I go get myself a shopping cart to haul my belongings around in.
And I HATE McDonald’s. And beer. Ick.
Ahem, before proceeding, I should like to note that I belong to the male gender of my peculiar species. Thank you.
Anyway, as far as those open windows go, I’d wanna see a cite, because it seems to fly in the face of reason. Why would anyone leave their windows open in the winter? Kinda hard to keep warm that way. Unless they left them open on accident, in which case I’m sure they’d close them as soon as they found out where that draft was coming from.
Why do I get the feeling that you’re assuming I come from priviledge? I’ve bowed and scraped for my nickles. It didn’t make me more careful with my money, and how I spent it. It only made me more careful with my time, and how I spent it.
Or how about we negotiate like the democratic society we are, instead of pretending that any compromises we make must necessarily be at the bequest of a jack-booted nanny.
And smarmy? Poke all the holes you want in my argument, but it’s nowhere near your place to to tell me my motives. I know I’m sincere, and I couldn’t give half a shit whether you believe it.
I don’t drive, so why the hell should I pay for your roads? I don’t have children, and I don’t like what the schools are teaching anyway. Why the hell should I give my taxes to schools?
And what if I believed in my heart of hearts that if we just put down our weapons all of our brothers from around the world would come rushing into our arms, so all of us can dance together in one giant circle of love and harmony? Does that mean I can stop paying taxes? After all, a huge chunk of money goes to defense spending.
There’s a word for being forced to partially pay for things you don’t partially agree with, in order to get other services which you do want or need. That word is democracy. And democracy requires a bit of something we’ve had to use since the beginning of time: compromise.
Apologies for the gender mixup, and really I make no assumptions about your priviledge, or lack thereof.
With respect to open windows, people who don’t pay for heat tend to crank the heat up full blast, and if it gets too hot, they open a window. I often have windows open in my apt when the heaters are going. That’s more due to a lack of heat control than anything else, but if I paid for my heat directly, you’d bet that I would wrest more control over my heat. Give people free anything, and they will abuse the resource (see email spam as an example)
This is one of the cornerstones of capitalism. Price is the vehicle by which limited resources are rationed. Remove price, and you eliminate the only way to limit use of the resource.
I’d much rather let people pay for their own utilities, and give them other support so that they can afford it. Support like welfare, food stamps, etc. This way, they should have enough money to pay for their necessities, but those things are still priced in proper economic fashion.
Oh Good Lord on toast. What other neccesities would y’all have the rest of us pay for? Groceries, light, air-conditioning, gasoline, child care? How about tee-vee, or the internet?
Does personal experience count?
Chicago has a lot of buildings that use steam heat from a boiler in the basement, with no metering of individual apartments. These were, by the way, mostly built between 1880 and 1920, and lot of them used to run on coal furnances. Anyhow…
The “control” you have over the old fashioned radiators in these apartments is limited at best. Not to mention even that control goes to hell if one of them starts to leak (it’s like having a geyser in your home) It is possible to have it shut “off” and still radiating heat.
Anyhow, the buildings are old, drafty, and the City can prosecute a landlord that does keep the minimum heat at a certain level in ALL apartments. Sometimes, in order that one tenant does not freeze, the system gets cranked to where others are roasting.
So… it’s 95 degrees in your apartment (yes, that happened once, according to our thermometer), you can’t turn the heat off any more than it already is… what do you do? You open a window, of course.
And then there are just general complete assholes who do this to “get back” at the landlord for some slight, real or imagined. Then they wonder why the rent keeps going up.
Well, I live in an apt. building that pays the heat for me and I have my windows up in winter often. The heater has settings 1-5 and the lowest setting is still way overheated for me. This complex has many senior citizens and I suspect they’re the ones who have the apt. manager keep the heat setting so high. I hate to waste the heat, but it is overheated beyond belief here. In fact, I hate to even put my coat on until I am outside.
Je-sus Key-rist.
The problem with allowing people to use energy for heat without paying for it is very simple. And in fact, one which you’d think there would be universal condemnation from the “left” about.
Do you think that people who know they will never be forced to pay for their heat will use it wisely? “Why bother to insulate the house or dress warmly - I’m not paying for it! Screw the environment, I’m setting my thermostat on 85 and walking around my house naked!”
I’ve personally known my ex-SO’s grandmother to be freezing in her house, but paying her bills dutifully - while in the same family, the grandkids ran their thermostat at “Inferno” level all Winter because " ‘they’ can’t turn off the heat!"
Cost provides regulation on energy use. And yet the same people who argue for increased fuel and energy and carbon taxes to regulate and conserve energy often argue for unlimited, unmetered use by anyone who claims they are poor.
And how, pray tell, does the utility tell if the so-called “deadbeat” is actually poor? The people in question above had two cell phones, a new pickup truck, and a fully-stocked Nintendo for their kids. They ate out 6 nights of the week (the 7th they were sponging off grandma, all the while bitching about how cold her house was). “Dad”, and I use the term loosely, spent his money on bass boats, guns, trips to that silly hunting lodge near Springfield, and a vacation to Vegas with the wife. And yet, 4-6 months of the year they just wouldn’t pay their heating bills (they only had gas for heat).
And then we have the next case - people can talk about deaths during Winter; the logical progression is deaths during Summer heat. Why not also advocate that “deadbeats” be allowed unlimited, unmetered electricity use during the Summer to run their air conditioning too? After all, hasn’t anyone ever heard of someone dying from the heat?
Recapping:
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Unmetered use and use with no financial consequences is anti-environmental and squanders resources. In fact, one might argue that support of free energy for heating is a very Republican concept, as it acts to prevent using more expensive, renewable resources. And that’s really wrong. People like elucidator might want to keep us on dirty but cheap energy for ages to come, but this Republican won’t stand for that.
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Even if all energy sources were of equal value, unmetered use is not the way a society can fairly allocate resources.
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There is no easy way a utility can verify who is truly deserving of leniency and who is truly deserving of free energy. They do not have the legal authority, nor the information access, nor the time and energy (no pun) to do so. Thus, by definition, the system is set up for abuse.
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The concept of “heat” being vital for life can be extended to “cool”. And light as well - I have no web-linkable cite, but residents here in downtown Kansas City were lobbying for “free outside lighting” some time back, so they could leave their lights on all freaking night long to “fight crime.” I think it broke down when they asked for the city and/or the utility to install the free outside lights, off-meter, on every home…what about gasoline? I’ve heard people claim that they should get free gasoline for their 8-mpg old behemoths because gasoline is something they need for their job, to feed their family - and yet, they must spend $50 a week on gas. How can the working poor afford that? We should make all gas pumps “payment optional” - “Welcome to BP Amoco! Please insert cash, credit card, or else think kind thoughts and vote Quimby!”
But on the other side…the only way a “free heat” system is workable is via government rationing given to those who qualify for public assistance. However, who decides how much to give? Apartments, townhomes, and houses have hugely different levels of insulation and heat loss. Anyone who intellectually honestly cares can review the stats for residential energy use on the EIA and see that. How do you decide exactly how much to give? How do you employ auditors to check or calculate? How is this done, without making a huge entrenched bureaucracy?
At another glance, it seems like “soaking the rich”, the “rich” here being defined by some as “those who pay bills” is the most economical way for the government and the utility to operate. But of course the least fair, and the one most worthy of resentment.
Let me state that I, like most “affluent conservatives” I have ever met, have no problem with paying a surcharge or funding heat for needy persons - provided just three, simple things:
- The money is used ONLY for the truly needy.
- The money is used wisely.
- Further money is used to DECREASE net energy consumption and HELP the environment by providing funds and/or direct assistance for improved insulation and more effcient appliances.
Are those such hard and unreasonable conditions?
“…People like elucidator might want to keep us on dirty but cheap energy for ages to come, but this Republican won’t stand for that…”
By Golly, you got me. Might as well 'fess up. Yeppers, thats the whole goal all right. If it wasn’t for the courageous Republicans, firmly standing up against the energy industry big wigs, and righteously scorning their money and influence,we would have succeeded years ago. We simply won’t rest until Saudi Arabia can be paved with hundred-dollar bills, an inch thick.
But our plan for world domination is thwarted by the Green Republicans! Both of them.
My one line was tongue-in-cheek, in your own style. However, the other hundred or so were serious, and apparently not rebuttable. I’d love to see a justification of how allowing people to use energy without consequences is good for the environment, but sadly, as we’re entering the “busy” portion of the day I soon won’t be able to access the SDMB for another…10-12 hours, as my proxy times out after 30 seconds now.
But you’ll also note that I do think there is a fundamental problem with trying to micromanage the distribution of energy from a government/welfare standpoint. It may actually be a “lower cost” to the utility to go ahead and let some people slide, rather than try to pursue them all. The cost of doing business in a regulated environment? Would deregulation yield a greater effort - even a harsher crackdown - on utility bill “deadbeats”, especially as their effect go right to the bottom line? Could one argue that deregulation is cruel from that standpoint?
But damn it, like I said, the problem is that as a conservative I hate to see resources squandered by people, the undeserving take from the mouths of the needy, and the environment worsened by human sloth and greed.
For further proof as to the difficulty involved in deciding who gets what, here are some hard facts.
From the EIA: ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/consumption/residential/2001ce_tables/spaceheat_consump.pdf
2001 - Space heating requirements, all households, by year of construction.
1990-2001: 35.3 MBtu
1980-1989: 29.2 MBtu
1970-1980: 32.4 MBtu
1960-1969: 41.5 MBtu
1950-1959: 50.7 MBtu
Before 1950: 65.4 MBtu
Now let’s look at energy consumption by income:
Less than $10,000 per year: 32.9 MBtu
$10,000 - $29,000 per year: 39.6 MBtu
$30,000 - $49,000 per year: 43.2 MBtu
Above $50,000 per year: 51.3 MBtu
Below “poverty line”: 34.1 MBtu
“Eligible for Federal Assistance”: 39.5 MBtu
Now let’s divide by house type:
Single family home: 52.3 MBtu
Apartment, 2-4 units: 44.3 MBtu
Apartment, more than 4 units: 13.1 MBtu
Mobile home: 30.8 MBtu
How about by race? Per household member, the heating requirements are:
Hispanic: 24.6 MBtu
White: 25.0 MBtu
Black: 32.0 MBtu
Multi-racial: 24.1 MBtu
Other: 19.1 MBtu
So, all we need to do is get a grip on those black, single-families living in houses built before 1950 with household incomes over $50,000 per year, and we’ve got it licked. (that’s light sarcasm)
It is interesting to note the “Apartment, more than 4 units number”, which is very low.
I don’t understand. What do you think those hard facts mean, and why?
If I may, I think Una is trying to say that managing utility costs through subsidies or other means is hellishly complex given the incredibly wide variation in apparent energy requirements of different housing situations (as reflected in the data). A simple across the board subsidy would either overcompensate some sectors to a huge extent or dangerously undercut some others, and anything more complex begins to require a large [and costly] bureaucracy to handle assessments, compliance, billing etc.
In many ways it makes more sense for governments at whatever level to subsidize home improvements which lead to reductions in energy consumption, whether through insulation, window replacement, weatherstripping etc. Also, while I am in many ways a liberal socialist bleeding heart, the fact remains that a lot of folks won’t conserve ANYTHING, whether it’s fuel, energy, or the number of coke cans in the basement pantry, without an economic incentive to do so. Removing economic incentives creates waste - “the tragedy of the commons” on some scale or other.
Kudos to Una for subjecting this partisan issue to some data-driven analysis.
Thank you, 'vaark. I’m trying to see both sides of the situation. Or three sides. Maybe four.
That while many (including myself) object strongly to people being allowed to not pay utility bills, and some (myself) see it as a slippery slope leading to other unwritten “entitlements” that may or may not actually benefit the needy and certainly are un-environmental - there is yet a serious problem of resources and cost and effort in trying to manage and determine who is needy and deserving of assistance, and who is not. This is the reason for quoting some facts from and linking to that 33-page document I did. Thus, although unpalatable to many (including myself), the status quo may be the best we are going to get for a while.