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Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Controlling the World is too Hard

... or so the City of Los Angeles is finding out. They're suffering the same problem all command economies face: reality is too complicated for government to manage. Dig this.
The crisis came to a head on Monday when the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power today indicating the utility wouldn’t send an anticipated $73 million payment to the city’s general fund.

The Department of Water and Power normally makes an 8% contribution to the city in lieu of taxes but does not have the expected $73 million because the city council blocked a proposed electricity rate hike.
What's the crisis? This is.
Los Angeles will run out of cash on May 5, city Controller Wendy Greuel said today in a release in which she requested a $90 million transfer of reserve funds to pay bills.

“The question I have been asked most often during the budget crisis is, ‘When will the city run out of money?” Greuel said in the e-mailed release. “Unfortunately, we finally have the answer.”
Filled with compassion for the less fortunate*, the city unwittingly hurt itself by blocking the water rate hike that the market demanded. Surely they can make up the difference somehow!

It's all his fault. Let's kill him, take everything he has and sell his organs!

* - or bailing out people who have made bad decisions, take your pick.
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2 comments:

  1. Aon2:38 AM

    They charge you for water in LA? Seriously? Water that you get at the sink type water or have they got something special in it?

    I guess the most obvious way to balance the budget will be to start charging you for air next.

    ReplyDelete
  2. tim eisele5:39 AM

    As far as I know, it's not unusual for cities to charge for water. The water supply infrastructure and maintenance has to be paid for somehow, after all, and charging more to people who use it more just makes sense. Oh, sometimes, like here in Houghton, they call it a sewer charge, but the meter is on the incoming water, not on the outgoing sewage, so it's really a water charge. And the money goes both to maintain the water system and the sewer system, so calling it a sewer charge isn't entirely incorrect.

    One might ask, why not meter the sewage? But, considering that sewage going out is mostly water, the incoming water is obviously a good proxy for outgoing sewage. Besides, I don't want to be the one to design and service an instrument to meter sewage, do you?

    ReplyDelete