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PG&E's schedule is tiered, but it also includes large fixed monthly costs. So the poor (and ultra energy efficient) also pay more per kWh than the (shrinking) middle class.
I agree that state regulators bear a lot of the blame for PG&Es woes. It isn't a free market, it is a regulated monopoly which means in exchange for having no competition, the company must cap their profits. Historically utilities earned a safe, but modest, return.
Corruption crept in when companies realized they could increase their income by increasing their expenses. Warren Buffett joked that utilities are the only businesses that earn more money when CEOs lavishly remodel their offices. So regulators began to clamp down on all expenses and CEOs learned to prioritize spending on visible projects, allowing infrastructure in rural & poor neighborhoods to fall into disrepair.
And being a regulated monopoly, consumers can't go to a competitor. In many counties, they can't even cut ties and go off grid due to public health codes enacted in the 1930s-1950s at the behest of utility lobbies.
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