Frugality vs Greed

I was sorting my bills for next month today and happened to notice there was an extra letter in my gas bill. Turns out the gas company is going to ask the state to raise everyone's rates. It isn't for repairs or because they're operating at a loss. Oh no, they want more money because while they did make a profit last year, it wasn't as high as the profit they wanted to make. To compensate for that, they want to charge everyone else extra.

So . . . when people complain about their winter bills being too high, they are told to handle the problem themselves. The tone of this is usually one of condescending shame, as if people are just leaving the heat on all day and wandering around the house in shorts or something. Rarely is this actually the case. I can tell you it has never been for me.

To keep our bills down, my household and many, many others, have resorted to using the bare minimum of heat. The heat is turned on just enough to keep the chill at bay. The house rarely gets out of the 60s. We sit with blankets wrapped around us. We wear layers and layers of clothing. We time meals to where the heat from the stove can be used for warmth as well as cooking. We do everything we can to keep this bill as low as possible.

And yet, despite our best efforts (and those of many others), in the end, our rates will go up anyway because the company isn't making enough money. Oh, it's making enough to stay in business, handle its projects, pay its workers, and justify its existence, but not enough to please shareholders.

So next year, we'll probably be forced to use even less heat. We'll accept that the house has to stay just a little bit colder. We'll pile on more blankets and do our best to handle daily tasks with gloves. Our rates will go up and people will still blame us, believing that it has to be the irresponsibility of the consumers that cause this. They will never think that it's due to the fact that some shareholder wants to by another ivory backscratcher. No, no. How could it ever be that?