Well, Bernie Bros, how did socialists light their homes before candles?

[iuwclurker]

You really don’t know the difference between free market industrialization and a regulatory GND, do you lurk. I don’t think I need a lecture from you about socialism.

Our military-industrial complex is funded by the government but the economic production is still privately owned. You'd evidently call that socialism but it isn't.

 

[iuwclurker]

Bernie today called tax cuts "socialism".... that's some truly creative thought......

Government-subsidized wealth for the 1%ers.

Seriously, if we objectively examine our existence, we see first that we exist as a group, a nation. That's not an opinion, that's a fact. We also exist as individuals. Some of us exist as couples and families. Each of these is a different dimension of our existence and each of us is at a different point on a continuum of each dimension, for example, Bloomberg clearly exists far more on the national level than Joe Schmoe, simply by virtue of the effects he causes. All facts. (Opinions enter into this in judging good and bad, better or worse, etc.)

Our nation has wealth. This is wealth of the nation, possessed by each of us as group members of the nation (citizens). Bloomberg is not entitled to more of it because he causes more effects. Opinions can vary on the optimal handling of our national wealth, its accrual, disposition and so forth, but disbursing a significant share of it to one group over another is noteworthy and probably fits in the category of "socialism," as commonly used by conservative demagogues.

Edit: The basic logic for taxation is that each group member utilizes the nation and its wealth to advance his or her own endeavors and in doing so, accrues individual wealth. Taxation is the nation taking "its" share of that wealth. No man is an island. So cutting taxes, a matter of opinion or judgment, is nonetheless ceding more of that wealth from the nation to the individual. Ergo, my choice of the word "disburse" above.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

It's why it works better at state levels... people in their state (or even region) are more open to offering state sponsored benefits than the nebulous idea of the feds offering a blanket system. It feels 1) more unde their direct control....2) going to people more like "them".

The ACA ended up modeled much like that... particularly with the Medicaid expansions.

Insurance needs to work across state lines. Let us pretend CA developed a system, there is no way to force the other 49 states to honor it. So we will force tourists in Disney to board a flight to CA to get their ruptured appendix removed?

IU has a health plan available that only covers the IU health network. No way would I sign up for that.

I have mentioned before, a buddy started a business in 2008 and could not afford insurance. He bought a cheap plan that was only for a specific Indy hospital, he showed signs of a heart attack, so his wife, a nurse, called 911 over his objections. He demanded they take him to his hospital and they were going to until he coded. Methodist was closest so they took him there instead. The docs there said he never would have survived the trip.

Moral of the story, insurance needs to be fairly universal. There is no way one state can develop anything close to universal coverage.

 

[CO. Hoosier]

Our military-industrial complex is funded by the government but the economic production is still privately owned. You'd evidently call that socialism but it isn't.

Government purchase of goods or services from private business is not "socialism".

This is why it's so difficult to have a discussion with you.

 

[Digressions]

Your “worth of a loved one” point is made worse by MFA. We used to play this game in hospital medical ethics committee I served on. You are given a finite amount to spend on public health care. How do you divy up the resource among the young, old, terminal, curable, value of a patient to family, community, and dozens of additional factors? That requires hard decisions and utilization bureaucracies, AKA death panels. In a private system, the total spending is not fixed by a government line item. If you think MFA will solve the problem you pose, you are wrong.

This is an interesting quote wrt the relativity of money...for several reasons. First, when did you have this committee? What would it have been like in 1960? 1980? 2000? 2020? 2040? Finite, huh? What gives you the idea that money spent on healthcare is finite?

The problem with your premise is that you imply if healthcare only has $1 trillion to spend, and the price of procedure costs X, we can only afford to do $1 trillion divided by X procedures. And once that trillion dollars is spent...death panels. That's not how that works, now, or with MFA.

A dirty little secret...We are basically using a MFA system now, and have been since 1965. The problem is our single payer negotiated an increase of 1-2% above CPI in perpetuity...beginning in 1965, for everything on the fee for service schedule, which encompasses almost everything in the healthcare industry. This has led to most healthcare costs rising 720% above CPI, and healthcare expenditures have gone from whatever they were in 1965 to 1/6th of GDP today, and tomorrow 1/5, and if left unchecked, eventually 1/2 or greater.

A couple years ago a poster came on here and wrote that we can't limit Medicare reimbursements because providers would go broke. Taking the relativity of money into account, how can that be? If providers are are making 720% above CPI, what expense/commodity has grown in price at that rate? The answer is nothing, not even close.

So what gives? The answer is that what we pay in terms of dollars for healthcare, is to the providers, revenue. And to assume that providers would go broke if revenue fell, is necessarily to assume that the providers expenses stayed the same. But that's not the way it works, because most of the expenses should be contained within the reimbursement schedule as well.

(Forgive me for injecting my occupation into the discussion, but I'll use it for clarity.) Imagine the price of corn is $2/bu in 2010, $4 in 2012, $6 in 2016, and $8 in 2020. If you tell me corn is going to be $10 in 2021, should I be excited? If you tell me corn is going to be $5 in 2021, should I be disappointed? If corn is $10 in 2021, we know you are going to pay more for corn, but that doesn't tell you anything about my income. If you say corn will be $5 dollars and I start screaming, "No, I'll go broke", I must necessarily assume I'll be paying the same amount I was for seed, chemical, and fertilizer as I was when corn prices were higher in 2020.

Because we understand the relativity of money and what CPI represents, we know that inside the healthcare system there is 720%(and growing) worth of pure profit, above and beyond the profits seen in 1965. Understanding this, and debating our priorities, is the key to bringing down healthcare costs.

For example, if we agree doctors and nurses, should be paid more than they are today we could set their yearly change from CPI +1-2%, to CPI -1%, and change their associated expenses to CPI -2%. That would effectively lower revenues (the total amount we pay in healthcare costs, aka bend the cost curve), while also increasing doctor's and nurse's income. 720% above CPI, allows plenty of wiggle room.

Edit: A shorter and alternative answer: I've never claimed that MFA is required to accomplish anything, but if you think privatizing healthcare is part of a solution, you overestimate the compassion of finance guys like myself running a hospital.

 

[iuwclurker]

Government purchase of goods or services from private business is not "socialism".

Not if you use your thinker. Government purchase of goods or services is not "free-market industrialization," the distinction you were keying on. In other words, Your "free-market industrialization" was a straw man -- it doesn't exist in reality, as you want to define it (or use it in your "arguments"). In reality, we have tons of government regulations in our most capitalist sectors, the purpose of which should be to create 1) a safe environment for citizens, 2) a fair playing field, and so on.

Thus my use of industrialization as an example of human endeavor changing the economy, parallel to the GND as a human endeavor to change the economy.

It's really not difficult to follow if your bubble isn't impermeable to reason and reflection.

 

[Digressions]

(Forgive me for injecting my occupation into the discussion, but I'll use it for clarity.) Imagine the price of corn is $2/bu in 2010, $4 in 2012, $6 in 2016, and $8 in 2020. If you tell me corn is going to be $10 in 2021, should I be excited? If you tell me corn is going to be $5 in 2021, should I be disappointed? If corn is $10 in 2021, we know you are going to pay more for corn, but that doesn't tell you anything about my income. If you say corn will be $5 dollars and I start screaming, "No, I'll go broke", I must necessarily assume I'll be paying the same amount I was for seed, chemical, and fertilizer as I was when corn prices were higher in 2020.

As an aside to this portion of my last post: We as a society underestimate the harm caused to capitalism by: mergers, acquisitions, and barriers to entry, that ultimately lead to companies being able to extract wealth. In ag, we have 2 or 3 fertilizer companies. In 2009, potash cost $850/ton. In 2018, $290. Pure extraction, based not on supply and demand, but how much can be extracted. Bayer just bought Monsanto. Are my seed prices going to drop? Outside of ag, Walmart can't afford to compete with Amazon? If they can't, who can?

I mention this because I wonder how much "extraction" happens in the healthcare industry? And if there are certain sectors, inside of healthcare, that could be helped by better market dynamics?

If we don't do a better job with antitrust issues, I fear we will eventually replace Morgan, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt, with Amazon, Google, and Facebook.

 

[CO. Hoosier]

What gives you the idea that money spent on healthcare is finite?

It's not totally. But it is in the UK, which is why the UK allows private insurance that Bernie would ban here. I posted a few weeks ago about the funding crisis in France's public hospitals because of finite funding.

The problem with your premise is that you imply if healthcare only has $1 trillion to spend, and the price of procedure costs X, we can only afford to do $1 trillion divided by X procedures. And once that trillion dollars is spent...death panels. That's not how that works, now, or with MFA.

No that isn't how Medicare works now. That is largely because the health care system is not fully dependent on public funding. If it were so dependent, choices would have to be made. For example, in the military, training has been curtailed because there isn't enough money to buy fuel for equipment. That's the natural result of government funding. It's probably tempting to say that we will spend what ever it takes to fully fund MFA, but that hasn't been the history even with Medicare. As somebody said once about socialism in general "sooner or later you run out of other people's money."

Edit: A shorter and alternative answer: I've never claimed that MFA is required to accomplish anything, but if you think privatizing healthcare is part of a solution, you overestimate the compassion of finance guys like myself running a hospital.

Point of agreement. I think we can save significant health care expenses with cutting back on the influence of the finance hospital guys. Along with that is cutting back on the idea that health care is supposed to be at the top of the economic ladder. There is something not quite right with the idea that health care administrators make several times the money that K-12 school administrators make. The social importance of the jobs suggests to me that those in education should earn more.

 

[twenty02]

Insurance needs to work across state lines. Let us pretend CA developed a system, there is no way to force the other 49 states to honor it. So we will force tourists in Disney to board a flight to CA to get their ruptured appendix removed?

IU has a health plan available that only covers the IU health network. No way would I sign up for that.

I have mentioned before, a buddy started a business in 2008 and could not afford insurance. He bought a cheap plan that was only for a specific Indy hospital, he showed signs of a heart attack, so his wife, a nurse, called 911 over his objections. He demanded they take him to his hospital and they were going to until he coded. Methodist was closest so they took him there instead. The docs there said he never would have survived the trip.

Moral of the story, insurance needs to be fairly universal. There is no way one state can develop anything close to universal coverage.

Unless you have large employer, ERISA type health insurance.... you have a health insurance policy that is state based. Whether that's Medicaid or individual policies..... those are all regulated at the state level. You can still have emergency coverage for out of state care.... but those types of emergency situations out of state are rare and not really relevant to broader health care costs.

 

[iuwclurker]

This has led to most healthcare costs rising 720% above CPI, and healthcare expenditures have gone from whatever they were in 1965 to 1/6th of GDP today, and tomorrow 1/5, and if left unchecked, eventually 1/2 or greater.

If providers are are making 720% above CPI, what expense/commodity has grown in price at that rate? The answer is nothing, not even close.

Because we understand the relativity of money and what CPI represents, we know that inside the healthcare system there is 720%(and growing) worth of pure profit, above and beyond the profits seen in 1965. Understanding this, and debating our priorities, is the key to bringing down healthcare costs.

Not exactly. The burgeoning healthcare industry has spawned a bureaucracy that requires its own prebiotics, so to speak, and that has also been a driver of our economic "health" -- jobs, etc.

Another interesting aspect of what you're saying about the percentage of the GDP -- we're talking about sick people. If half the GDP is spent on sick people, how sick are we as a nation?

 

[hoot1]

The coconut is just a crude way to focus on the importance of the relativity of money. Focusing on the effects to supply and demand takes us down an unnecessary rabbit hole that complicates things, but I'll try to address it to it's logical conclusions. This is really an aside to my point, but...

If you were to inflate the economy/money supply you could get to where products which "peak supply" (think peak oil), or peak demand (if you were on an island full of coconuts, you could get to a point where coconuts are worthless, because how many coconuts can one person eat?).But that has more to do with the elasticity of supply.

As for "alternative coconuts", let's look at a real world example. When I was a kid I could buy a bag of plain M&M's for $.25, now a bag costs $1.50. It's the same plain M&M's. Why? Inflation. But I now have the option of Peanut, Caramel, Hazelnut, Peanut Butter, and on and on(think alternative coconuts), why is that? Are those alternatives that sprung up, due to inflation, or an increase in disposable income, or tax cuts? No. They're simply a way for M&M's to try and gain market share relative to other manufacturers in an otherwise relatively elastic market.

The candy market is an example of oligopolies controlling the market as this article points out.

Three companies dominate the candy market, preventing newcomers with new products from ever making it to store shelves​

We like to believe we have free enterprise, but there are markets dominated by monopolies and oligopolies.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

Unless you have large employer, ERISA type health insurance.... you have a health insurance policy that is state based. Whether that's Medicaid or individual policies..... those are all regulated at the state level. You can still have emergency coverage for out of state care.... but those types of emergency situations out of state are rare and not really relevant to broader health care costs.

In this case, I am not talking cost. It is functionality. Millions of Americans, skewed toward middle class and up, have insurance now through an Anthem or other company that offers a nationwide network. Good luck passing any system that tells them they need to buy a 2nd insurance that covers the travelling. Heck, good luck educating them that they will need to buy a 2nd system for travelling.

 

[CO. Hoosier]

Not if you use your thinker. Government purchase of goods or services is not "free-market industrialization," the distinction you were keying on. In other words, Your "free-market industrialization" was a straw man -- it doesn't exist in reality, as you want to define it (or use it in your "arguments"). In reality, we have tons of government regulations in our most capitalist sectors, the purpose of which should be to create 1) a safe environment for citizens, 2) a fair playing field, and so on.

Thus my use of industrialization as an example of human endeavor changing the economy, parallel to the GND as a human endeavor to change the economy.

It's really not difficult to follow if your bubble isn't impermeable to reason and reflection.

All the pieces and parts of an F 22 are made by private business which may or may not be totally dependent on the government contract. I don't know what your point is, but I do know that is not socialism. Similarly, some paving companies are 100% dependent on government contracts. That isn't socialism either.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

Unless you have large employer, ERISA type health insurance.... you have a health insurance policy that is state based. Whether that's Medicaid or individual policies..... those are all regulated at the state level. You can still have emergency coverage for out of state care.... but those types of emergency situations out of state are rare and not really relevant to broader health care costs.

Actually, thinking further, this explains why we need a national system. Do we really want 50 different state laws and insurances? Do we want to bisexual insurance for every state we drive through in a cross country trip? "We can't make that side trip to Gettysburg, I forgot to buy Pennsylvania coverage". My auto insurance works in all 50 states.why should not my insurance do the same? Are our autos entitled to more rights?

 

[Digressions]

Not exactly. The burgeoning healthcare industry has spawned a bureaucracy that requires its own prebiotics, so to speak, and that has also been a driver of our economic "health" -- jobs, etc.

Another interesting aspect of what you're saying about the percentage of the GDP -- we're talking about sick people. If half the GDP is spent on sick people, how sick are we as a nation?

I agree with your first paragraph, but disagree with your second. The percentage of GDP, doesn't tell us anything about our health. As an extreme example if my healthcare costs are $19 trillion, the rest of the country is healthy. Costs are independent of aggregate health. As a less extreme example, if a person had acid reflux in 1990, they were forced to live with it. In 2000, they could buy Prevacid. Which time period was "healthier"? Which time period had more costs?

 

[twenty02]

Actually, thinking further, this explains why we need a national system. Do we really want 50 different state laws and insurances? Do we want to bisexual insurance for every state we drive through in a cross country trip? "We can't make that side trip to Gettysburg, I forgot to buy Pennsylvania coverage". My auto insurance works in all 50 states.why should not my insurance do the same? Are our autos entitled to more rights?

I don't know what you are referring to exactly..... but this is already how it works currently. For true emergency services..... even if you go to an out of network facility.... you insurer is required to cover you at in network rates. That is part of the ACA mandate..... even though these policies may well be sold on individual state based exchanges.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

I don't know what you are referring to exactly..... but this is already how it works currently. For true emergency services..... even if you go to an out of network facility.... you insurer is required to cover you at in network rates. That is part of the ACA mandate..... even though these policies may well be sold on individual state based exchanges.

I do not know how all insurance works. Mine is Anthem and there are medical facilities in every state I have been to that are "in network". I imagine there are rural areas that may be very tricky though.

 

[iuwclurker]

All the pieces and parts of an F 22 are made by private business which may or may not be totally dependent on the government contract. I don't know what your point is, but I do know that is not socialism. Similarly, some paving companies are 100% dependent on government contracts. That isn't socialism either.

That was my point. Neither is NGD.

 

[Digressions]

That is largely because the health care system is not fully dependent on public funding. If it were so dependent, choices would have to be made. For example, in the military, training has been curtailed because there isn't enough money to buy fuel for equipment. That's the natural result of government funding. It's probably tempting to say that we will spend what ever it takes to fully fund MFA, but that hasn't been the history even with Medicare. As somebody said once about socialism in general "sooner or later you run out of other people's money."

This is pretty much non responsive to my post, considering I went into detail about the problems and solutions to our current system, but I'll bite. You assume if we go to an MFA system it will run out of money. That may be accurate and correct, but logically has nothing to do with the merits of MFA. There is no difference to my bottom line if I pay $10k a yr in taxes, or $10k a year in insurance premiums. So you can assume that MFA will run out of money, but then you must allow me to assume that if we don't bend the cost curve wrt our current system...we will run out of money in the same manner.

 

[CO. Hoosier]

That was my point. Neither is NGD.

GND is intended to regulate economic sectors up to and including bans on certain activities and products. That’s not how government procurement works.

 

[Stuffshot]

That's strange. Either you don't know what a conservative is or you are just being dishonest. I'd like to think the former but your post tends toward the latter.



I don't know if that's true or not. But so what? Democrats have been calling Republicans racist, homophobes, misogynists, hating the poor, and more for decades--just to keep power. That's the political world these days. Conservatives didn't make that world.



I don't understand this.



Yes.



Strongly disagree. Make your case.



Highly regulated economic sectors advances the ball towards socialism. That is part of what socialism is--a centrally planned economy in place of an economy that responds to market forces. This is part of Bernie's campaign message and is also who he is as I pointed out elsewhere. As I said before, there is no purity along the socialist/market continuum (except maybe Cuba and North Korea) but I don't think there can be any dispute that Sanders wants to march us in the direction of socialism.



I think this is quite easy to reconcile. I'll let your "Trump supporter" remark slide this time. I will say that Trump has presided over enacting an agenda that Reagan, and most conservatives or Republicans, would be very proud of; tax reform, judicial appointments, military preparedness, military equipment modernization, VA reform, right to try certain drugs, border enforcement, opportunity zones, fair trade, standing behind first responders, and more are items that Reagan had also advanced. Trump is singularly focused on job growth. There are more jobs created now than people to fill them. That has put upward pressure on blue collar wages which are on the increase. Yeah, there is a lot to dislike about Trump, most all of that is the aesthetics of how he operates. That's not a major matter for me.



Nobody has to listen to me.



Yeah, socialism scares me. I just finished a book about Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, China, Sweden, Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, what socialism is, and what it isn't. Yeah it's scary. If you are scared by me reminding people about Sanders' socialist proposals, I guess that's on you. I post what I think.




.

Thank God you put all this crap in the same post so I can scroll past it all in one motion.

 

[Digressions]

GND is intended to regulate economic sectors up to and including bans on certain activities and products. That’s not how government procurement works.

Banning fracking is no more socialism than banning heroin.

 

[CO. Hoosier]

Banning fracking is no more socialism than banning heroin.

Sure it is. Police power bans, like prohibition, were not intended to help the tobacco industry. Machine gun bans are not intended to help other business. While some will argue that banning fracking is similar to a police power ban, it’s really a ban intended to change the energy economy. Socialists routinely employ bans to alter the economy, including banning private farms in the old Soviet Union.

 

[Digressions]

Sure it is. Police power bans, like prohibition, were not intended to help the tobacco industry. Machine gun bans are not intended to help other business. While some will argue that banning fracking is similar to a police power ban, it’s really a ban intended to change the energy economy. Socialists routinely employ bans to alter the economy, including banning private farms in the old Soviet Union.

Two things. There are some people on this board that don't understand we've had socialist tendencies inside our economy since its inception. They don't recognize the socialist/market continuum, like you do.

Second, I see much of Bernie's proposals(which as I stated, I don't agree with) as a shift in that continuum, within the framework that currently exists here. Not as a complete takeover and government ownership of entire industries, like Venezuela. You obviously disagree.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

Sure it is. Police power bans, like prohibition, were not intended to help the tobacco industry. Machine gun bans are not intended to help other business. While some will argue that banning fracking is similar to a police power ban, it’s really a ban intended to change the energy economy. Socialists routinely employ bans to alter the economy, including banning private farms in the old Soviet Union.

Indiana bans Sunday alcohol sales by convenience stores in a law written by liquor stores and chain groceries. So Indiana is socialist?

 

[Digressions]

Sure it is. Police power bans, like prohibition, were not intended to help the tobacco industry. Machine gun bans are not intended to help other business. While some will argue that banning fracking is similar to a police power ban, it’s really a ban intended to change the energy economy. Socialists routinely employ bans to alter the economy, including banning private farms in the old Soviet Union.

I would also like to point out that you still haven't cited one conservative contribution to the American greatness that occurred during the 40's to 60's? I'm suggesting that you should have been clutching your pearls in 1980, warning everyone of the calamity that conservatism was to bring. We know of the income/wealth disparity that was created. The outsourcing and offshoring. Trumpers want to MAGA, yet they don't want to follow any of the blueprints that made us great. I would suggest they don't have a firm grasp of history.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Dwight_D._Eisenhower

"In domestic affairs, Eisenhower espoused a policy of "modern Republicanism" that occupied a middle ground between liberal Democrats and the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Eisenhower continued New Deal programs, expanded Social Security, and prioritized a balanced budget over tax cuts. He played a major role in the establishment of the Interstate Highway System, a massive infrastructure project consisting of tens of thousands of miles of divided highways. After the launch of Sputnik 1, Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act and presided over the creation of NASA."

Name a Republican who holds office today that would agree with anything Eisenhower did, or stood for?

 

[hoot1]

I would also like to point out that you still haven't cited one conservative contribution to the American greatness that occurred during the 40's to 60's? I'm suggesting that you should have been clutching your pearls in 1980, warning everyone of the calamity that conservatism was to bring. We know of the income/wealth disparity that was created. The outsourcing and offshoring. Trumpers want to MAGA, yet they don't want to follow any of the blueprints that made us great. I would suggest they don't have a firm grasp of history.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Dwight_D._Eisenhower

"In domestic affairs, Eisenhower espoused a policy of "modern Republicanism" that occupied a middle ground between liberal Democrats and the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Eisenhower continued New Deal programs, expanded Social Security, and prioritized a balanced budget over tax cuts. He played a major role in the establishment of the Interstate Highway System, a massive infrastructure project consisting of tens of thousands of miles of divided highways. After the launch of Sputnik 1, Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act and presided over the creation of NASA."

Name a Republican who holds office today that would agree with anything Eisenhower did, or stood for?

CoH can speak for himself, but he has been on record at the Cooler as a big Ike fan.

 

[UncleMark]

CoH can speak for himself, but he has been on record at the Cooler as a big Ike fan.

When it's convenient...

 

[iuwclurker]

GND is intended to regulate economic sectors up to and including bans on certain activities and products. That’s not how government procurement works.

The basic aim of GND is to create a clean planet and develop the infrastructure and industries that align to that. That's not what you said. Any idiocies contained in the GND of any particular politician are ... idiocies. If you had one iota of integrity and sincerity in you, you would discuss topics from a constructive point of view, in polar opposition to your current posting agenda.

If you favor a clean planet, you favor GND and you favor constructive, sensible versions of GND. Otherwise, you favor a polluted planet. No ifs, ands, or buts.

 

[JamieDimonsBalls]

And there's the double down. Bernie doesn't want pure socialism, or even Venezuelan socialism. He couldn't get there if he wanted to. But no matter how many times, no matter how many people, and no matter what is presented to you, you won't leave Venezuela alone....because Republican (aka your team).

Shameless bump, but also hope you are doing ok

Venezuela monthly inflation hits 28.5% in May, central bank says

Venezuelan consumer prices rose 28.5% in May, more than the 24.6% rate reported in April, central bank data showed on Wednesday, as the crisis-stricken OPEC nation struggles to contain inflation.

www.reuters.com

 

[NPT]

But under our version of capitalism I must buy my electricity for my light bulbs from an monopoly regulated by the goverment.

Sorta like socialism when it comes to utilities.

That only applies to part of the country. Our daughter lives near Dallas and she has the option of several power companies to choose from.