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Millions in U.S. face energy shutoff
UPI
Large numbers of Americans face the prospect of energy shutoffs during the coming months because of rising energy prices and stagnant wages, officials said.
Millions of U.S. consumers are behind on paying their utility bills following a winter in which many struggled to cover the increasing cost of heating their homes, The New York Times reported Friday, citing energy and utilities officials.
(25 April 2008)
Contributor Larry Hughes writes:
Pretty disturbing, given the state of the US economy. Probably a foretaste of what we’ll be experiencing this winter.
Lights and Gas Move More and More Out of the Range of Ordinary People
Sharon Astyk, Casaubon’s Book
… questions of whether the Grid will stay up aren’t the primary issue when it comes to electricity – the question of whether you can pay your bills will be. With more and more defaulters, utility companies are likely to lobby to end winter shut-off laws in houses without medically fragile people, and they may well succeed.
Meanwhile, the housing bust is accellerating and job losses are rising. Unless you are very certain of your income, it would be wise to assume that some portion of next year may be spent without power in your house. If living there without it isn’t pleasant for you, do what you can to make it so. I strongly advice my readers to consider ways of making no (or very low – getting your bill down to something you can actually pay and prevent shutoffs with) power.
(24 June 2008)
Why I Do Feel Bad for the Middle Class
Sharon Astyk, Casaubon’s Book
… I’m still going to say that it is worth feeling some sympathy with people who have been getting along and now simply aren’t, even though the problem is their own damned fault in some cases. Why?
The biggest signs of crisis are among the truly poor, but that this is rapidly moving up the ladder to the middle class. And the argument that the middle class should have made better choices also applies to many poor people – we end up on a very slippery slope if we decide that one class of people is fully responsible and one isn’t. The poor often could conserve and make better choices than they do too – I think we can either let the poor off the hook for their choices and the lower middle class, or we can let nobody off – the latter involves a kind of personal auditing that I think is kind of pointless. There are, in every group, people who simply can’t do any better than they are, and people who are extraordinary fortunate, those who had everything and threw it away, those who never had the capacity for much. The truth is that if you utilities are getting shut off, you probably are functionally poor, despite your income. And if you are getting shut off regularly, you have no idea how to adapt. And that is worth some sympathy.
The truth is that the majority of the people we’re talking about are probably working class, two income families with crappy educations. They use a lot of energy because they are ignorant of the issues, because they are strapped for time, and because they probably spend a lot of their income on housing, heating and transport – and they didn’t know that gas prices were going to rise and keep rising, and now they can’t sell their truck or SUV for much of anything, they can’t borrow from their housing, and they don’t yet know how to adapt. They have the house they do because that was the kind of housing that was available, and because it was within their means and conservation didn’t mean shit in the culture. Many of them are also probably elderly – they have the fixed expenses of the homes they thought they would stay in, and the lifestyle they’d lived so long they thought it would last for the rest of their lives at least.
(25 June 2008)
