tiears apparently there's a proposal going around in california to change the way electricity is billed. it's currently a statewide tiered system. the kilowatt-hours (kiwis) in the first tier are cheap. the kiwis in the next tier are more expensive. and so on until the kiwis in the top tier are like 5x more expensive than the bottom tier. the basic idea is to make electricity for your everyday needs affordable. but to penalize people for using too much. seems like a pretty good system. so what's the problem? people who live in the central valley where it's hot use a lot more electricity than people who live on the coast. my electric bill is typically in the $50/month range. rumor is, theirs is in the $500/month range. most of which is air conditioning. which we don't have. cause we don't need it. so the idea is to adjust the tiers by location. ie people in the central valley would be able to buy more electricity at the lowest rate. so their electric bill would be on a par with our electric bill. even though they use several times more juice. seems like a really good idea from their point of view. the problem is... i've shopped for houses in the central valley. they're big. my house is 2400 square feet. it's bigger than we need. my house would be a small house in the central valley. bigger houses cost more to cool. my house has insulation. lots of it. the houses we looked at in the central valley were cheap assed things. no insulation. single pane windows. so gee whizakers batman. no wonder air conditioning costs a fortune. frankly, i don't have any interest in subsidizing those poor sweltering folks living in a house much much larger than mine. i'm not completely heartless though. i might be willing to subsidize insulation and e-star windows. simply cause it encourages people to use less electricity instead of more. dumbasses.  ¶ 8:00 AM