Random Ramblings

Talk about some BAD Advertising

I got a flyer in my recent Duke Power bill that was a really bad attempt at telling me how great and wonderful Duke Power is and how I should be happy with their exceptional efficiency. They showed how every $1 I send them is broken out:

$0.24 pays for power and fuel
$0.15 pays for monthly payroll
$0.11 pays for operating costs and maintenance
$0.14 is retained as earnings or used to pay dividends to stockholders
$0.17 pays for depreciation
$0.13 pays for taxes
$0.06 pays for interest and preferred stock options

First off, there is a figure of a dollar bill which is broken into pieces -- each item above has a line to a representative piece of the dollar bill. Except that it is not actually "to scale" and thus is extraordinarily misleading. The piece that represents the $0.11 for maintenance is nearly twice as large as the piece for $0.17 for depreciation! Of course, they did make the $0.24 part (that pays for actual fuel costs) the largest piece of the drawing -- just so I know how much they put out for little old me. Of course it is closer to 33% of the drawing, but who's really counting.

All of which also obscures the fact that for every dollar I send to Duke Power, nearly $0.20 is sent to stockholders! This is a LARGER percentage than they pay their actual workers.