Posted on 06/29/2012 8:16:14 AM PDT by listenhillary
Energy poverty is sweeping over modern Germany like never before.
Flagship German newspaper Die Welt has an online report titled: Fast 800.000 Deutsche können Strom nicht bezahlen. In English: Almost 800,000 Germans cannot pay for electricity.
As Germany subsidies wealthy homeowners and businesses owners to install solar panels on their homes and commercial buildings, low income families living in rented apartments are getting stuck footing skyrocketing electric bills. Many can no longer afford to pay for electricity, and so the utilities are cutting off their power.
Indeed high energy prices are causing everything else to get more expensive as well - all this while the euro is threatened to collapse under the weight of massive debt due to financial ineptitude.
So it’s little wonder that German politicians are beginning to panic and coming up with really nutty solutions. Instead of scaling back the cause of the energy mess (government meddling in the energy sector) they are threatening to do the opposite: i.e. meddle even more – much more.
Aribert Peters, Chairman of the Bund der Energieverbraucher (Association of Energy Consumers) says that already 600,000 to 800,000 people in Germany have had their electricity cut off, all thanks to skyrocketing electricity prices due to friendly green energy. Spooked, a number of leading politicians and consumer advocates are now calling for financial assistance for low income households, i.e. energy welfare. Die Welt writes:
"Energy companies should be obligated to offer the first 500 kilowatt-hours per household at a low rate, SPD (social democrat party) faction vice chairman Ulrich Kelber demanded in a strategy paper, which he wants to present to the SPD leaders.”
Peters of the Association of Energy Consumers, however, goes even further, saying there’s a need for a general cost exemption for the first 500 kilowatt hours consumed per year and household. The exemption should apply to all citizens.
Also the VdK Social Association of Hesse-Thuringia is demanding social tariffs. VdK chairman Udo Schlitt says that without a price rebate, more and more people with low incomes are going to have their power shut off. He proposes:
"Therefore all power producers must be mandated to offer binding social rates by law.”
So in summary, here’s Germany’s latest energy plan: 1) Force power companies to buy exorbitantly-priced, inefficient and intermittent-supply green energy on one side, and then force them to give it away, or sell it at a low price, on the sales side!
How long can that go on before it all collapses?
Of course it will and the rest of us will be forced to subsidize it through yet another large tax hike.
Looks like the ‘Metrosexuals’ apartament dwellers are getting their due.
A mandate is NOT a tax! /sarc
anyone have a large supply of those old hand cranked generators , you could make a killing LOL
.. low income families living in rented apartments are getting stuck footing skyrocketing electric bills. Many can no longer afford to pay for electricity, and so the utilities are cutting off their power.
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Ahhh, Socialism is the napalm of today’s Progre$$ivists.. it smells like Victory.. and it leaves a charred remains of a society in its wake.. easily swept up.. all for the love of green.
Well said.
Didn’t Rush have a parody commercial a few years ago for Restless Leg Syndrome where the problem could be harnessed to generate electricity on a stationary bicycle?
Start pedaling, Germans!
The lower income or “takers” in society should really understand that the Liberal elites will throw them under the bus before that elite allows their power, standard of living or ideology to be threatened.
“Green” energy isn’t about energy,
it’s about false righteousness.
Ping.
Who knew the color Green was the key to defusing the legendary sensibility, ingenuity and intelligence of the Germans?
US Intelligence could have used this valuable information in World War II.
Green Power leaves more Germans in the dark than the Hamburg raids.
My trip to Europe showed me that the Auto rental places asked me not to use E10 in the car, and the back country scenery had wind powered generators more abundant than Palm trees in Florida. Packs of 12 plus generators on one large Rapf field was not uncommon. Soon it will be a country of large propellers on the skyline.
Green is the new Red
Burn coal not corn.
Yes we are stupid.
These socialist are children, they are 5 year olds. They think that just because they wish that something was true that it its true.
Why not just dictate that the first 500 kilo-watt hours are free. Then everyone would be able to have electricity. Well that is until they used up their 500 kilo-watt hours then of course these people still would have no money for the now extremely expensive electricity.
What these children fail to realize it that the utilities still have to pay their creditors. If you give the poor cheap electricity the cost of that electricity is still the same and the difference in the cost of the Cheap electricity for the poor and what the real cost of the electricity has to be diverted to other consumers of electricity and some of that deferred cost will end up on the poor’s bill in raised rates subsequent to the cheap 500 kilo-watt hours. Everyone’s rates will go up including the poor.
The socialist believe that the laws of economics can be dictated by law. Unfortunately for the socialist and us the laws of economics (the market place if you prefer) are just like the laws of physics; they will not be cheated. In the end someone pays and when the government meddles in the market everyone pays more.
Large propellers and no birds.
Rachel Carson will finally have her silent spring thanks to the Green Movement and their bird Cuisinarts.
Coming?
30 years ago, when I lived in California, in Monterey, my bill skyrocketed in the summer - instead of going down (our gas and electric were together, so summer = no gas for heat: ergo, bill should go down?)
But it skyrocketed. I could get no explanation. I went to the top and DEMANDED one.
They sent a rep out and 'explained' to me that, in the summer, it cost so much for people to keep their swimming pools heated (Monterey is COLD for summer and pools have to be heated).
"And WHAT does that have to do with ME and MY bill?" I asked. "I have no swimming pool no can I afford one.
"well," says he, "it's really expensive and it wouldn't be fair for them to have to pay it all, so we share the cost."
One more reason I left Kalifornia - 30 years ago.
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