by Katy Grimes, E&E Legal Senior Media Fellow and California Globe Editor
As Appearing in the California Globe
Income-based utility billing is the latest assault on the productive in California
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.”
