Does your electric company give you a discount or allow CPAP users to be on the priority restore list?

In newer, or "better" neighborhoods, utility lines are underground--very resistant to storms,
(And wayward tv antennae)
It is a good idea to avoid buying or renting where you can see utility poles.

bwexler wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 19, 2019 11:03 am

If I go to the store and buy a bunch of bananas, should I pay more for number 10 than I would for the first one?

Go through the checkout with one banana each time. Bananas are healthy. Walking is healthy.

bwexler wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 19, 2019 11:03 am

You guys are all right about what RIGHTS we have.
And I understand the golden rule, he who has the gold...
But why should anyone pay more for the 300th KWH or 3000th KWH than they did for the first one. Yes we should pay for each KWH we use but none are intrinsically worth more than another. So my discount doesn't give me anything for free. It only allows me to pay a flat, equal amount for each unit I use.
If I go to the store and buy a bunch of bananas, should I pay more for number 10 than I would for the first one?
What you are advocating here in SDG&E land, is that those who can scrimp and get by with an arbitrary minimum amount of power should in fact get a discount while all who use a bit more should subsidize them. And, those who choose to use a lot of power should pay more per unit and subsidize all of their more frugal neighbors.
I would suggest a flat rate par per unit for all use, so no one is subsidized. That is all I accomplished for myself.
I have always advocated for each us to negotiate the best available deals for everything we acquire. When was the last time you paid sticker price for a new car?

Here in Indiana that's not the way it works, while the idea is to use the least KWH the less per KWH we use the less per unit we pay. The same applys to water and natural gas. However Sewage and Trash are governments Cash Cow, Bend over and Yell "Moo"!

Sticker Price or Manufacturers Retail Price, Isn't the price anyone but a fool pays, It's a starting point to make you feel good, while getting overcharged while paying the negotiated price.

If you went into Car Dealership and wanted to order 12 new cars, instead of just one, I'll bet you could get a Deal on the purchase. I also think the rates should be the same for everyone, but I think if you use it you pay for it! Jim

Supply and Demand, they Supply, if you want it they Demand their Money!

ChicagoGranny wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 19, 2019 11:50 am

bwexler wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 19, 2019 11:03 am

If I go to the store and buy a bunch of bananas, should I pay more for number 10 than I would for the first one?

Go through the checkout with one banana each time. Bananas are healthy. Walking is healthy.

wouldn't it be better healthier to jog?

zonker wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 19, 2019 3:10 pm

ChicagoGranny wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 19, 2019 11:50 am

bwexler wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 19, 2019 11:03 am

If I go to the store and buy a bunch of bananas, should I pay more for number 10 than I would for the first one?

Go through the checkout with one banana each time. Bananas are healthy. Walking is healthy.

wouldn't it be better healthier to jog?

I used to also think Bananas were healthy until I found how they blow up your Blood Sugar higher than a Hershey Bar! Jim

What about education? We require all school age children to go to school, and we treat it as a right that children have, that we even enforce by law if they are not going... are teachers slaves then because they work for the government? My family has a lot of teachers and I can tell you they don't go into it for the money, if they did they wouldn't and we wouldn't have any teachers to teach the next generation of kids... "Heck we're having problems with that now, as all the older teachers are retiring and the new ones are teaching for a few years and then going "the hell with this, I'm out'a here!"

Doctors shouldn't be Slaves to their patients, but the fact still remains that we have a strongly capitalistic business first system for our healthcare in the US, and it makes for some seriously SCREWED UP situations that people can find them selves in. Why do some hospitals charge 10 to 20 times more for a service that another?

You can have a hospital that charges a flat rate of say, 300 dollars for the use of laughing gas in a person's room during the delivery of a child, As an optional method to help with pain control, then another hospital charges 100 dollars every 15 min the bottle is in the patient's room even if they didn't even use it... A lot of talk about choice is mentioned but there comes a point were common sense should step in and control the situation a little bit. How in the world are you supposed to know what your getting into to make a "Informed choice" when we have a medical system were costs are completely out of control, not published, hidden, and downright absurd?

Also if your struck down in the middle of a city with a ruptured appendix, you could go to hospital A? or B? or C? (lets say for giggles they're all exactly 15 min away from you), your on a fixed income... how do you know at a moment's notice that hospital A is kind of expensive but you might be able to manage with a payment plan, Hospital B has a program were they work with your income bracket and charge accordingly, and hospital C will destroy your world, wreck your credit and maybe try to sue you if you don't pay them fast enough.

And as far as doctors being slaves? How about medical companies were they treat their doctors and staff exactly like slaves... till they collapse from over work, and we get stuck with the consequences like avoidable medical mistakes, while the upper elite in the company spend half the week poking around on golf courses or sailing in their privet motor yacht?

There is a bit of a messed up analogy that any Tom, Dick, or Harry can become a multi millionaire if they only "Work hard enough" and if you don't have a 6+ figure income then your just lazy, even if your working 3 jobs so you can afford a 1 bedroom apartment that you share with your kid. Not everything in life can be managed if you just "Make good choices" sometimes your dealt a really crappy hand, and the people that can turn garbage into gold are few and far between. When you go back and look at the Magic stories of people who went from nothing to success, "Luck" is a part of a lot of their stories, for every 1 of them, there most likely hundreds of people who had the exact same skills and qualifications and drive... they just had different circumstances to live through.

When you think about all the assorted jobs people do... we need all those jobs to be done but wage growth has stagnated to the point were a lot of those jobs don't make enough for people to survive. Having medical care, (Which is a need), be subsidized so that people who can't afford it don't get screwed over is something I feel should be a right. You should have a right that you can get your appendix taken out so you don't die with out your finances being destroyed for the rest of your life. Meh... Of course doctors should be payed well for their services but we still have a completely messed up system and it seams like the people who need it to be fixed are not in the driver's seat. The people making the money, running the business of health care are getting to peddle their influence and maintain the status quo while a lot of people get stuck with the short end of the stick. It doesn't have to be like that... It doesn't have to be 100% socialized medicine ether, but it should be better then it is now.

We are talking about a machine that uses less than $ 4 a month in KWH to run. and you want to soak your Neighbors for your bill, Not just the $ 4, but all you can get them to take off. no matter how much the real use cost is. Jim

Gryphon wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 19, 2019 3:36 pm

What about education? We require all school age children to go to school, and we treat it as a right that children have, that we even enforce by law if they are not going... are teachers slaves then because they work for the government?

Of course teachers aren't slaves just because they work for the govt. They entered into a voluntary agreement for employment with their school district, knowing ahead of time what the deal was likely to be. They went to school to get their education degree, presumably with their eyes wide open as regards teacher's pay & benefits.

By the same token, a pondering I've had is, if the govt wants to set up public hospitals (like another branch of the military, but under Dept of Health & Human Services), and then train & hire public docs/nurses/staff who all knowingly agree to work at govt rates and benefits, nothing is stopping them. Patients who want to go to the public hospital can certainly do so. But others may want to go to a private practice and get a different level or type of care just as parents can opt to send their kids to a private school that has a better track record of educating students than their local public schools. But the current govt proposals I'm hearing would preclude *ANY* mutual agreement between my private doctor and me, because there would no longer BE any private healthcare - they all want to outlaw it. Talk about trampling on your rights.

As for costs, public school teachers don't cost as much as doctors for many reasons, but one of the main ones is they don't get sued if a student can't read write, add, subtract, etc. Teachers can utterly fail at educating a whole class of children consistently, semester after semester and, if unionized, it's extremely difficult to fire them for poor performance. Docs, nurses, hospitals, pharmaceutical mfrs *AND* insurance companies can (and do) get sued a gazillion different ways, day in and day out. The cost of managing that risk is horrifically expensive and is but one of the many factors leading to healthcare costs. FDA rules & regulations intend to help & protect us, but they also heap additional cost for compliance.

Then there's the effect of rising costs just because govt subsidizes anything. Supply & demand is not a govt program, it's a natural behavior of the marketplace. There's a delicate balance that must be found and maintained or else you end up with (for another education example) skyrocketing college tuition costs that track right along with the ramped up increases in federally backed education grants and loans. Colleges are known for having folks with a modicum of smarts. And being smarties, they don't generally walk away from the table leaving money on it. Hence, the more money the govt fire-hosed into the college market, the faster the costs rose. The unintended consequences of govt's subsidies can be brutal to a market. And heaven knows there's a ton of govt subsidies, rules and regulations in healthcare that puts the infinitely heavy thumb of govt "good intentions" on the cost scales.

Like P.J. O'Rourke said, "If you think healthcare is expensive now, wait until you see how much it costs when it's free!" Was it Finland or Norway's govt that just cratered because they can't afford their "free" healthcare? I can't recall which, but it was recent news and that's for a nation the size of one of our mid-sized states. Try to scale that up to the size of the US, take our current healthcare system and then add on incredibly thick layers of bureaucracy at the federal, state and local levels, and it defies simple logic that it will somehow cost *less* than it does now. You are adding a veritable army of govt paid bureaucrats -- who will likely join the federal union(s) -- and the expense just for them will be shocking, not to mention the added expense they will cause as they attempt to forcibly create order out of a healthcare market that is naturally chaotic and difficult to predict (we don't plan/schedule to get an inflamed appendix - it just happens).

There are no simple answers, but there are lessons we should have already learned the *hard* way about what happens when the govt meddles in private sector markets.

Thanks,
-JD

Gryphon wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 19, 2019 3:36 pm

In my fantasy world I wish:

Children were not minors and could choose to go to school or not.

That teachers could choose to be teachers or not. (slaves can not)

That everyone had free laughing gas in their room at all times.

You could go to any emergency room in any city in the USA and receive care.

That doctors and staff could quit their jobs any time they wish. (slaves can not)

That rich people were not so lucky, darn it.

That our economy was not doing better than it has in a very long time and wages are the best ever.

That some people's logical thinking was as well developed as their emotional thinking.

And last, but not least:

I wish CPAP's had a built in cuckoo clock.(but that is another thread completely)

bwexler wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 19, 2019 11:03 am

You guys are all right about what RIGHTS we have.
And I understand the golden rule, he who has the gold...
But why should anyone pay more for the 300th KWH or 3000th KWH than they did for the first one. Yes we should pay for each KWH we use but none are intrinsically worth more than another. So my discount doesn't give me anything for free. It only allows me to pay a flat, equal amount for each unit I use.

There is a fallacy in your argument, and it is thus:
it costs *more money* to build *bigger* power plants to provide *more power* to those people who are using large amounts of it.

Ergo, people that are using higher amounts of power should shoulder a proportionately larger share of the cost.

If someone's sucking down 10 times the power someone else is, and pushing the capacity of the power system into the red, why should they get by with the same rates as someone who's NOT taxing the system anywhere near the same extent?

If someone's sucking down 10 times the power someone else is, and pushing the capacity of the power system into the red, why should they get by with the same rates as someone who's NOT taxing the system anywhere near the same extent?

If I was sucking down 10 times the power, I would be paying exactly 10 times the price. That would pay for the necessary expansion.
By the way, when you move into my neighborhood and use power, should you pay up front to expand the power plant to offset your usage? Or will your monthly fee take care of that?

Our local utility has "Smart Hours" during the summer months. It is voluntary, but I manage to save over $100 on my electricity bill during the summer. From 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm, Monday through Friday, the electric rate varies from 10 to 42 cents per KWH. The price is set the day before based on predicted temperature. The rest of the time, electricity is about half of the normal rate. They furnish a programmable thermostat that they install free. In an emergency, they have the ability to raise the temperature setting. They have never done it to me, but the option is available. I have already saved almost $100 this summer, and still have two months to go.

bwexler wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 21, 2019 9:24 pm

If someone's sucking down 10 times the power someone else is, and pushing the capacity of the power system into the red, why should they get by with the same rates as someone who's NOT taxing the system anywhere near the same extent?

If I was sucking down 10 times the power, I would be paying exactly 10 times the price. That would pay for the necessary expansion.

Oh, how little you know about infastructure.

Okie bipap wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 21, 2019 9:49 pm

Our local utility has "Smart Hours" during the summer months. It is voluntary, but I manage to save over $100 on my electricity bill during the summer. From 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm, Monday through Friday, the electric rate varies from 10 to 42 cents per KWH. The price is set the day before based on predicted temperature. The rest of the time, electricity is about half of the normal rate. They furnish a programmable thermostat that they install free. In an emergency, they have the ability to raise the temperature setting. They have never done it to me, but the option is available. I have already saved almost $100 this summer, and still have two months to go.

This is a good program. It charges the entities who have the most demand during peak periods. The cost of their usage is not spread over others who reduce their usage. Good job, Okie.

Also consider that power generation plants and the power distribution grid was designed for a certain demand that some really smart engineers deduced, "Ehhh... That should be enough." They did a darned good job; however, circumstances and needs change over time and we routinely try our darnedest to exceed the design capacity. Remember "brown-outs" in the northeast? I believe they are getting better at managing it through more energy efficient consumer products (appliances, hvac, etc), power-saving programs and controlling demand by making your wallet hurt when your usage exceeds market-driven norms (the extra cost for higher usage). Now that's not the only reason they charge more for higher use, but it's part of it. There's a healthy dose of "supply & demand" in there as well.

Not sure how effective charging more for higher use is at reducing demand for something people crave. Disney's been doing that since the day they opened to where nowadays a single day in a single park will easily run a small out-of-state family over $1000/day to shed 1/4 of their body weight in sweat in July in Florida -- and folks are "lined-up-around-the-block" to *eagerly* pay it. So even if they are trying to manage (theme park capacity / power-system loads) with higher prices to cool the market, the "demand" can still beat the tar out of "supply" despite their efforts.

Like Yogi Berra sort of said, "It's tough predicting supply & demand. Especially about the future".

-JD