On Oct 10, 2009, at 3:37 PM, James Heartfield wrote:
> Shane Mage writes that the calculation that UK energy bills will
> rise to 2000 pounds sterling is nobody's fault: "why blame
> ecologists, or anyone at all, for electricity costs rising to their
> real value (taking account of the external diseconomies of
> generating electricity by polluting fossil fuel and grossly
> subsidized nuclear plants)?"...I just did a calculation on the
> government website of what a family dependent on unemployment
> benefits would be entitled to: 3623 pounds sterling, meaning that
> more than half their income would go on fuel bills.
>
I do blame somebody for the likely negative effects (under capitalism)
of pricing electricity at something approximating its real cost:
those who throw hundreds of billions to the banks but consider it
unthinkable to increase unemployment benefit (and wages generally) by
a mere £2000 p.a. over the next ten years (that's an increase
equivalent to one dollar a day per year for each of the next ten years).
Shane Mage
> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos