Comment by genewitch

> How much is due to long overdue infrastructure upgrades and greed by providers, vs the cost of energy?

This only makes sense if you ignore profits. We've been paying the bills since before this was "overdue"; for instance i am still paying a storm recovery surcharge on my electric bill from before i ever moved to this state. At the point where a "temporary infrastructure surcharge for repairs" becomes a line item on their profit statement, that's where i start to get real annoyed.

Our electric company has 287,000 customers and has a market cap of >$800,000,000

what percentage of that eight tenths of a billion in market cap came from nickel and diming me?

* note: nickel and dime was established as "an insignificant amount of money" in the 1890s, where sirloin, 20% fat was $0.20 a pound. That's $13.50 now (local); chuck $0.10 and $19 now. So somewhere between 67 and 180 times less buying power from a nickel and dime, now. Also that means that, y'know, my surcharges being $15-$30 a month is historically "nickels and dimes"

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112019293742&s...