It's Always The Arithmetic

A few times, these endeavors have made mention of the fact that average cost is what really matters to the MBA Masters of The World, not the marginal cost of economists. Folks like the putative Labor Secretary Puzder, who prefers robots to people in his production, just assume that machines are better than people. Leaving aside, for the moment, that machines don't take their value add based wages and buy output, capitalization based production does have, at least, one downside: fixed cost.

Here's a note from today's briefing.com:

The two operating units at the Indian Point Energy Center will close in 2020-2021 after powering New York for more than four decades with clean, safe, and reliable electricity. The early and orderly shutdown is part of a settlement under which New York State has agreed to drop legal challenges and support renewal of the operating licenses for Indian Point, located in the Village of Buchanan in northern Westchester County. The shutdown will complete Entergy's exit from its merchant power business because of sustained low wholesale energy prices.

In other words: with energy conservation, and alternative sources, the amortization of nukes might not make sense. There's more evidence of the problem. Don't put those panels on your roof!!

Industry officials say they support their customers' right to generate electricity on their own property, but they say rooftop solar's new popularity is creating a serious cost imbalance. While homeowners with solar panels usually see dramatic reductions in their electric bills, they still rely on the grid for electricity at night and on cloudy days. The utility collects less revenue, even though the infrastructure costs -- from expensive power plants to transmission lines and maintenance crews -- remain the same.

Now, apply the same complaint to healthcare... Reduce demand (by fiat of King Donald of Orange) for capacity already installed, and you'll find the 1% squealing that their healthcare costs have actually gone up.

It's always that damned arithmetic. That a six year old understands. Read the whole Post story, and you'll see that much of the rhetoric is just propaganda, and the tentacles of Koch is documented. And, whatever happened to The Cube?