Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 281 posts

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#261

Post by imichael »

curryst wrote: post #246
imichael wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would seem that an important part of the "market" is missing, namely the ability of consumers to respond to price signals. If every customer could set a maximum price and automatically be cut off when the price goes higher then the load shedding would be automatic, with the available power going to those willing to pay more, presumably because they need it more or can afford it.

That assumes that disconnecting from the grid is a viable option. During this issue, disconnecting from the grid had a substantial chance of causing your pipes to freeze and burst. I wouldn't hold my breath that your insurance will cover that if you turned off your own power. One of my takeaways is that you really don't want people trying to attempt DIY heating systems. There were ~450 calls for carbon monoxide poiso…

I don't think we really disagree. My point is that the market won't function unless demand can adjust to prices. Right now there is no mechanism to allow it and the market can't possibly work.

If there were, as you say, it still might not work. But there were a lot of pictures of empty buildings with lots of lights on, etc. so there are inefficiencies. And if customers were automatically switching off (or simply reducing their own usage) as prices went up maybe prices would never have gotten so high. Ideally it would sort of be a fine-grained "rolling blackout" where priority is determined by what a customer chooses to purchase given all the variables that only the customer is aware of. That's a functioning market.

I agree that it may be completely impractical to make it work for electricity.

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#262

Post by cardiffspaceman »

8note wrote: post #226
jonplackett wrote: post #41

This is the side of privatisation that gets ignored. When private companies screw up, who gets left with the bill? Private companies have no incentive to be ready for really big problems because they know they’ll get bailed out, or just not have to pay. Privatise the profit, socialise the losses.

I'm not clear why shareholders aren't on the hook for these cases, on a per share basis. The individual owners can declare bankruptcy instead of the business

There are lots of ways to structure a firm. Some of them involve the sort of partnership that would effectively make the debts of the firm into shared debts of the partners. But others the debts of the firm are just that, and the only thing a debt of the firm can do to a shareholder is make the shareholder's share worthless. In the first case the partner might have to sell their Berkshire Hathaway shares to help the firm pay a debt. In the second case the shareholder doesn't have to sell off the BRK-B, or their house.

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#263

Post by hurril »

croon wrote: post #62
hurril wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who foots the bill with non-private companies? If anything, _that_ is what's ignored.

The same people, without losing the profits.

What do you mean by "without losing the profits"?

A tax-funded electric firm would surely not share its profits with anyone, and even if it did it would still be at a net loss to the tax payers. (Since _all_ the funding would come from the tax bill - so its entire turnover is socialised.)

A private firm would actually contribute _more_ to our common because it would be a net tax payer.

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#264

Post by nybble41 »

croes wrote: post #249
nybble41 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to their 2019 annual income statement[0], Amazon paid a total of $2.374B of foreign and domestic income tax on pre-tax income of $13.976B. That's 16.9%, not 1.2%. Is the author perhaps comparing US taxes with global income? (Or perhaps just whatever was left over after paying estimated taxes?) That certainly looks to be the case since they cited US federal income tax while the $13.9B pre-tax income figure i…

https://www.statista.com/statistics/241835/amazon-operating-... Operating income 2019 in million dollar North America: 7,033 International: -1,693 AWS: 9,201 So 1.2% is pretty accurate.

The division between the North America and International segments is based solely on which web site was used (e.g. amazon.com vs. amazon.co.uk), not the tax jurisdiction. The AWS segment is global, and the North America segment includes income from the Canada and Mexico sites. In sort, you can't infer much about what portion of the income is taxable in the US from those operating income figures.

Even considering all North America + AWS income together, since they paid $1.360B in domestic US income taxes that year (not $162M) the percentage would still be 8.37%, not 1.2%. That's ignoring all foreign taxes and the losses from the International segment. Do you consider a minimum 76% error margin to be "pretty accurate"? I sure don't.

Keep in mind, too, that losses from prior years can be carried forward and deducted from current income. That's part of the reason that there were no taxes paid in the two previous years; the current-year income is only part of the story. This is perfectly reasonable when you consider that $3B in losses one year followed by three years with $1B in annual profits equals no net income for that four-year period. Why should there be any income tax liability when there is no income? The alternative to carrying forward losses would be a refundable tax credit for the years with negative income to offset the taxes collected in profitable years, but that would be very easy to game.

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#265

Post by klodolph »

bzbarsky wrote: post #259
klodolph wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In your analogy, … Going to stop you right there. I wasn’t making any analogies. I was talking in literal terms.

Well, "the grid" is not literally like "roads"; they have all sorts of difference in practice in terms of who interacts with them and in what ways... So equating them in some way is absolutely an analogy.

I wasn’t equating them. I think you might be responding to something else in the thread.

I was pointing out that the parts of our food supply chain that are infrastructure and the parts that are market driven are different parts. The problem with thinking that we have “market-driven infrastructure which provides food” is that the system which provides us food is partly infrastructure and partly market-driven, but that doesn’t mean that the infrastructure is market-driven. The infrastructure parts (e.g. roads) and market-driven parts (e.g. farms) are different parts.

There’s no analogy here, I’m not using analogies, drawing comparisons, or equating things.

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#266

Post by nybble41 »

croes wrote: post #248
simonh wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least it was accurate. I don't think anyone here is cheering tax evasion on or denying there are problems There clearly are. Let's at least be honest about it though.

The 13 billions pre-tax income seems to be domestic and not foreign. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241835/amazon-operating-...

What you can tell from that source is that most of the income is attributable to AWS—which is global—with most of the remainder being from sales at amazon.com, amazon.ca, and amazon.com.mx. Even if we simplify and assume that revenue from sales at amazon.com is strictly domestic, and the sales from the Canada and Mexico web sites are negligible, that says nothing about pre-tax income for the purpose of calculating US income taxes. For that you would need to know what fraction of their business expenses are related to their US operations.

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#267

Post by hinoki »

m4rtink wrote: post #260
hinoki wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just found this [0] paper about the development of the Tsukuba Express, one of the more recent train lines into central Tokyo. Land owners whose land is taken away are given new plots of land that are smaller, but closer to stations. These smaller plots are worth more than the original land because they are now near (future) train stations. [0] http://www.wctrs-society.com/wp-content/uploads/abstracts/ri...

That's really clever idea, no wonder they can get it to work, thanks for the article! BTW, that's something else I noticed in Japan - train stations are almost always hubs of commercial and often also cultural activity - there are shops, hotels, good restaurants and often also galleries, event spaces, monuments and even the buildings themselves are often architectonic masterpieces (for example JR Kyoto station, just…

In Japan, the train companies own the land immediately around the station to develop themselves, so the incentives line up to provide both good transportation service and things people actually need near the stations.

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#268

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dragonwriter wrote: post #194
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your distinction that it has to be USA territories - colonies like Guam, Puerto Rico? - but not necessarily USA proper, so military bases and consulates count (?) but could be termed 'outside USA' or is something else going on here?

No, the distinction is that “natural-born citizen” is a phrase in the Constitution about which there is some debate about it's exact meaning, but the dominant understanding is “citizen by law at birth and not later naturalized” rather than “born in the United States”.

>dominant understanding is “citizen by law at birth and not later naturalized” rather than “born in the United States” //

OK, that didn't clarify much for me, I'll have a look myself. I'm guessing now that there are other ways to be a citizen when born abroad, like 'born to USA citizens and repatriated within 5 years' or somesuch.

https://www.findlaw.com/immigration/citizenship/u-s-citizens... seems useful from a source I generally trust but have not corroborated.

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#269

Post by fomine3 »

snidane wrote: post #94
jonplackett wrote: post #41

This is the side of privatisation that gets ignored. When private companies screw up, who gets left with the bill? Private companies have no incentive to be ready for really big problems because they know they’ll get bailed out, or just not have to pay. Privatise the profit, socialise the losses.

It's actually well understood that privatisation for platform industries is bad, privatisation for businesses running on top of platforms is good. Networks and infrastructure = little to no competition. Eg. networks naturally settle in a optimal geographical location and utilize economy of scale then. Can't compete with that. So don't privatise platforms. Rather - make them monopolistic and make them share the revenu…

Generally agree for fiber, water, power, road, etc. But I wonder is there any mobile network operator succeeded with this model.

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#270

Post by 29athrowaway »

dragonwriter wrote: post #44
29athrowaway wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was not born in America so he cannot be a president.

You don't have to be born in America to be President, but you do need to be a natural-born citizen. Of course, the idea of amending the Constitution to remove that requirement to clear the path for a particular candidate (not that long ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger was mentioned) has come up before; current restrictions won't necessarily apply indefinitely into the future.

Well, sure. Strictly speaking, jus solis or jus sanguinis. e.g.: You are born in international waters to US citizen parents.
Post reply on HN