[blam]

"I can recall a friend in the military telling me about his relatives stealing electricity in the Appalachians decades ago. The bottom line is that the poor everywhere manage by doing what ever they have to do if not making a living wage."

Yup. My granddad went to prison for a year for making moonshine during prohibition in SE Alabama.

[longtermmemmory]

Reminds me of a NY City story, turns out YEARS ago a "smart" landlord discovered that his power meter would operate in reverse if the wires were switched. So if you reverse the wires the meter would count down instead of up. So a landlord would run the meter in reverse a few days. A few geniuses just kept the meter running backwards and the meter read like it was creating electricity.

(they don't run backwards anymore)

In Miami, there are occasional house fires where people use jumper cables to bypass a meter which has been cut off for lack of payment.