> the bill should be doled out according to income First, income and electricity usage are already correlated for most residential customers -- in general weal

> the bill should be doled out according to income First, income and electricity usage are already correlated for most residential customers -- in general wealthier individuals use more electricity and therefore pay more under either approach. More importantly, making taxpayers subsidize very-high-electricity consuming businesses and manufacturing seems unfair and regressive. (For example, an aluminum smelter may use as much electricity as a large residential neighborhood but pay lower net taxes than that neighborhood.) Third, paying for the actual cost of electricity helps incentivize energy efficiency which incentivizes energy efficiency and has environmental benefits. Finally, if your goal is to prevent rate increases from burdening low-income households then using taxpayer funds to bolster targeted subsidies such as LIHEAP seems like a more direct and cost-effective approach. > (almost) everyone in the nation should share the cost, not just the customers of a specific utility in a specific geographic area Why? If we make it easy for utility executives to ask for handouts and grants then who among them would bother with the comparatively harder task of convincing local customers to pay the true costs of producing the service they are using? More generally, asking everyone to collectively subsidize organizations or regions that make poor, short-sighted decisions is a moral hazard that shields utilities from consequences and discourages them from planning responsibly. Sure, a government may need to be prepared to step in to take over a failing utility but that seems like it ought to be a last resort in emergencies, not a standard way of funding predictable business costs.