Nationalize The Utility Companies

Except perhaps for food and water, there are few things more basic to life in a civilized society than having utilities in your home—the ability to heat, cool, and light your home and cook your meals and have the most basic necessity: water. Without utilities your house or apartment is nothing but a cave. What is wrong with a society that increasingly cannot provide utilities to millions of people when it’s obvious we have the wealth to take care of everyone?

Nationwide, the number of households that had their utility service disconnected for nonpayment rose 5 percent in fiscal 2009, despite a doubling of federal emergency utility assistance. Some 4.3 million U.S. households were disconnected for nonpayment in fiscal year 2009, as federal assistance more than doubled to $5.1 billion. More than 8 million households got emergency utility assistance in 2009, up nearly a third from the 6.1 million in 2008. It’s estimated that nine million to 10 million households may seek aid in 2010.

Utility shutoffs kill people. Look at every state, every major city, and you’ll find the stories of the tragedies that result from shutoffs. Southeast Michigan and the Detroit area are prime examples. Tens of thousands of Detroit households are without water. In the last two years, nearly 400,000 homes in southeast Michigan have had their utilities shut off by the regional energy company, DTE. In 2009, the company cut service to 221,000 households, an increase of 50 percent over the prior year. Of the 16 house fire deaths in Detroit in 2010 as of April, at least 11 took place in homes without utilities, according to the Detroit Fire Department. Among the dead so far this year: two wheelchair-bound brothers in their 60s, and three children ages 3, 4 and 5.

These people were murdered by a corporate system that is protecting private profit and private property at the expense of the people’s needs.

DTE has seen a 14 percent growth in its year-over-year profit since 2008, and DTE’s CEO and Chairman Anthony F. Earley, Jr. took home $11.4 million in combined pay in 2007 and 2008. Large Wall Street banks and investment firms have more than $2 billion invested in the company.

People can’t pay for utilities because they don’t have jobs, or they don’t have jobs that pay a living wage. We are not just dealing with the normal cyclical crisis of capitalism where workers are temporarily thrown out of jobs and then eventually go back to work. Electronic technology is replacing more and more labor in the workplace, and millions of jobs have been eliminated forever. For millions of us, the jobs aren’t coming back. The cutting off of utilities is a symptom of the rising structural unemployment and underemployment in our country, and that unemployment is a manifestation of a growing new class created by electronics—a class that no longer has a place in the market economy. As long as the energy companies are privately owned and utilities are provided only if you can pay, then millions who have been pushed out of the economy won’t have access to utilities. We need a new system.

How long will we tolerate the corporate murder and driving down of our standard of living? It will go on as long as we let it. There is plenty of money in this country to provide every single household with all necessary utilities. In the long run we need a new, cooperative society where the necessities of life are distributed according to need. In the short run, we need to nationalize the utility companies so that we, the people, can guarantee the basics of a civilized life to every person in the country.