Scott Patterson

speaker

67 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2021 last heard Feb 2021

Scott Patterson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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WSJ Your Money Briefing · Why Your Electric Bill Might Not Go Down Under Deregulation · 25 Feb 2021 podcast

People just know they need power in their house.

They're going to pay whatever it takes, and they ignore it.

They often just put it on auto pay.

Yeah, it's going on in about 14 to 15 states for electricity, including Washington, D.C.

And we've seen similar patterns of people paying more than they should if they were getting their electricity from a utility in other states.

But Texas really stood out to us as...

being an outlier in terms of how much more people are paying compared to what they would pay to a nearby utility that doesn't have the retail competition in the state.

The lobbying behind this industry is very powerful and influential.

And they have a good line in the fact that people get a choice.

If you take away competition, they don't have a choice.

People get a choice with their cable bill or telecom or what have you.

And they also offer a variety of perks.

So you can sign up to these events.

packages and get an Amazon gift card, or you can get a percentage of your electricity provided through green energy.

And that's not something that you normally get from a utility.

So that's really what it comes down to in terms of what the industry says to justify maybe sometimes charging people a little bit more.

I think that maybe consumers don't realize how much they're paying to get those perks.

But, you know, it is a debate that's being had.

This came along with a wave of deregulation in industries in the 90s, like the airline industry, telecommunications.

There was even opening up a competition for trading on Wall Street in the 90s and 2000s when we saw day trading take off.

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