By Richard E Walrath

There’s a lot of talk about regulation, but I don’t see a lot of evidence of it.  More of it in the food industry, especially imports, would please me.  People who buy toys think there should be more regulation, too.

Republicans want  to deregulate and Democrats want to regulate.  Airlines used to be regulated, now they’re not.  But that was Jimmy Carter’s doing. 

Are they, are we, better or worse off?

Deregulation led to Enron, at one time the largest corporation in America.  We know what happened to it.

At one time, of course, there was, basically, only one telephone company–AT&T.  There were others, but altogether they had a very small share of the total. 

Power lines and telephone lines are very expensive to install, and you want only one company in each area.  In return for having a monopoly, the utilities are supposed to hold down rates and were regulated by the government. 

That was then. 

The next idea was that utilities could offer better service and prices if there were more competition.  It’s cheaper now to have a phone than it used to be.  But that’s because we have entirely new systems. 

It’s the same old electricity, however, coming in on the same old power  lines, and the price keeps going up, up, and away.  

Electricity, which is extremely energy intensive, isn’t going to get cheaper until it’s produced in a different way–using an energy source other than coal.