Sure, but fighting the impulse to solve problems at the Federal level that could/should be solved at the State level doesn’t preclude individual states from building multi-state solutions together.
If compliance requires that every user provide some form of ID, this policy will be a catastrophe for privacy and a major downgrade in terms of usability. Much more annoying than the pop-ups asking me to acknowledge cookies.
Maybe although I don't know how they would identify the "safe" drivers among the folks that are just mindful during the evaluation period. Perhaps they weed people out who seem to drive routes their system doesn't handle well. Still, it seems like the rollout plan would be a good way to collect a training set that is biased toward safer driving habits.
Also, this sort of short evaluation seems like it wouldn't mitigate that much PR risk. It may even increase bad press if things go poorly and people point to it as an indication that they knew it wasn't ready.
Typically in markets like CA and TX you will have a rate case go to the public utility commission. I'm more familiar with Texas' approach (it was a data source for my dissertation); the idea is to let the companies charge enough to cover reasonable costs.
No, it won't, because PG&E doesn't have the money to do this, and the company is already majority-owned by the PG&E Fire Victim Trust after emerging from bankruptcy.
There are no rich shareholders to foist the costs on. No investors are going to pay tens of billions of dollars, more profit than PG&E generated over several decades, to pay for 10% of the electric wires to be buried. If there were any investors on the hook for this, they would simply declare bankruptcy and walk away.
The only option here is that the costs are paid by ratepayers, or taxpayers. There is no other option available.
I see, thanks for explaining. That would have made for a nice addition to the article. :)
IMHO an infrastructure of this size & importance might just as well be state owned, but I guess rate hikes will also do. As long as there is some mechanism to help (yes, probably with tax money) those who might not be able to afford them...
in that case why have owners at all? it should basically be nationalized then. otherwise taxpayer paying the cost without really reaping profits (if there are/will be any)
Because government-run electric utilities are a mixed bag too. "Public" utility monopolies like PG&E are an attempt to get some of the benefits of a market system from what is fundamentally a government service. The utility can raise money from investors, who expect a modest but stable return. In theory, the profit motive gives the utility an incentive to keep costs in check.
It's far from perfect, but actually-public utilities are responsible for a lot of disasters too. It's not obvious that nationalizing PG&E would be good for anyone.
Except they have regulated profit margins - it's cost-plus. So they have an incentive to make everything as expensive as possible to maximize their take. And the CPUC rubber stamps everything the utilities ask for.
CA has some of the most expensive electricity in the nation. So it doesn't seem like the idea worked out.
You'll have to verify this yourself, but my understanding is that there is no clear winner on the public choice issue of public vs private electrical. There are well-run and poorly-run examples on both sides.
In PG&E's defense, it's not literally cost-plus, and the CPUC doesn't always rubber stamp everything. Imagining the government alternative, what would really be different? There will still be a big bureaucratic organization full of imperfect humans with muddy incentives and limited resources. Would PG&E be better if the board of directors was appointed by politicians instead of elected by shareholders? I doubt it.
The most expensive energy would be Alaska and Hawaii for obvious reasons. California’s rates are similar to northeastern state rates (a bit lower than their average) but is definitely high for a western state that benefits from a lot of cheap hydro.
I can’t find it now but a while back someone posted the meeting minutes from the CA PUC review of PG&E’s budget. It had stuff like “request to replace chain link fence for $175k - denied” and it was a 1,000+ page document.
PG&E has to get approval for their spend from the PUC and for any rate hikes.
Not really, but familiarity with accounting terms and some basic investment concepts helps. The course is designed for NYU MBA students and many of them have already taken corporate finance which gives them a head start. Damodaran puts all of the course info online (notes, lectures, emails to students, etc), though, which allows you to go at your own pace. The emails sometimes contain pointers to helpful supplemental materials.
If you check out the email archives [1], you'll see that Damodaran wrote this in the first message: "1. Preclass work: I know that some of you are worried about the class but relax! If you can add, subtract, divide and multiply, you are pretty much home free… In are you have forgotten your accounting, I have added my version (which would probably not be approved of by your accounting professor) of an accounting class to my website:
http://people.stern.nyu.edu/adamodar/New_Home_Page/webcastac...
If you want to get a jump on the class, you can go to the class web page:
http://people.stern.nyu.edu/adamodar/New_Home_Page/equity.ht... "
Exactly. Don't hate the player, hate the game. Any real discussion needs to get into specifics of which rules of the game are unfair and how they can be improved.
I agree and an important question is what is a good strategy to mobilize action in advance of disaster. The news is full of warnings about impending disasters. (Most) people can't evaluate the relative risk of each of these events, so the natural response is to be overwhelmed and assume we will deal with it when/if it occurs. I don't know if it would have much of an effect on how inclined readers would be to act, but articles like this one would be a lot more compelling if they included real data that demonstrates NYC is at a greater risk than it has been in the past or than other similar cities around the world.
I agree. Very incremental and I’d be surprise if it’s a meaningful growth driver. However, it probably has most appeal to new investors who are just starting out which seems on-message for Robinhood. My teenager who got interested in learning about investing this past year has a portfolio comprised almost entirely of single share positions. Fractional shares would interest him.
