Some of America’s largest utilities cut power to millions of struggling customers in recent years even as they spent billions of dollars on stock buybacks, dividend payments to shareholders and executive salaries, a new analysis of industry data has found.
The report also reveals that companies could use just a tiny fraction of their investor and executive spending to forgive debt at all households where power was cut.
The shutoffs disproportionately affect low income and customers from communities of color, and the “harrowing” situation is driven by corporate profiteering, said Selah Goodson Bell, a study co-author and energy justice campaigner with the Center For Biological Diversity.
Losing power has an often devastating impact on a household, including in terms of health and safety. “Shutoffs allow corporate utilities to punish customers’ economic precarity while guaranteeing record profits and massive payouts for themselves and their investors,” the authors wrote in the report. It was compiled […]
People cannot whine about escalating costs, yet demand higher profits for their investments…..it just doesn’t work that way! Wake up…..
I cannot stand the higher prices of Electricity. I now pay 33% more for electricity this year than I did the same time period last year, even though I used less of it.
P.S.: I also got the largest gas bill this month that I have ever had in my life, even though I keep my thermostat down to 65 degrees which is very cold for my big house.