Last month I wrote about a conversation I had with a very nice lady about the amount of her monthly electric bill. She related she was disabled and had custody of her grandchildren. She was forced to find a cash-paying job to preserve her disability payments and make ends meet. She summarized her situation by saying she was working to pay the electric utility to keep her power on so she would not lose custody of her grandchildren.
There are a number of people in the same situation. My research indicates that about 1 to 2 percent of PowerSouth’s members’ electric consumers have difficulty paying their monthly power bill and have their electric service disconnected (and most often re-connected) from time to time.
Those people are under constant pressure to keep their household bills current, feed and clothe their families, pay for gasoline to get to work (or look for work) and provide the basic necessities of life. Maybe you know some of those people. Others have lost their jobs, can’t find work, are on disability or are retired on fixed incomes. My heart and yours goes out to the ones we know in these situations. How do they get by month to month? What is their hope for the future?
All of which leads back to a couple of basic questions. Is electricity truly a necessity of life? Should all Americans have access to electricity?
The answer to the first question is easy. Yes, electricity has become a necessity of life. It, along with running water, has become an essence of our lives and our lifestyles. Everything we have and do is either directly or indirectly attributable to electricity.
The second question is more difficult. As Americans, it is easy to say we should have access to the biggest and the best, and by and large we do – if we can afford it. But what about those that cannot – those I talked about earlier that have difficulty paying their power bills from time to time? What about their necessities of life?
The question becomes even more difficult when we have a president who promised during his campaign that “electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket” and “we will increase the cost of fossil fuels to a level that renewable energy will be competitive.” Through Environmental Protection Agency policies and regulations, he is well on the way to fulfilling those campaign promises.
If that occurs as it appears it will, what about the poor – those having difficulty making ends meet now? With increasing electricity prices, the number of Americans having trouble paying their power bills will increase. Are those Americans to be written off as not important enough to have the benefit of affordable electricity? Will they have to find another job to pay for the necessities of life? What will they have to do without to pay increasing electric bills? These are all very difficult questions that few people have considered.
I doubt you have considered those questions, even if you are on a fixed income. I think about those issues often, and I don’t know of any easy answers.
I wonder if our president has considered those questions. Will his answer be that electricity is such an essential element of life that it must be available to all Americans, and if an American can’t pay their power bill, then the government will? After all, those that control energy will control the world. Something to think about.
