FCC Votes To Subsidize Broadband Connections For Low-Income Households 283
Mark Wilson writes: Today the FCC voted in favor of updating its Lifeline program to include broadband. This would mean that households surviving on low incomes would be able to receive help paying for a broadband connection. It might not be as important as electricity or water, but having a broadband connection is seen as being all but essential these days. From helping with education and job hunting, to allowing for home working, the ability to get online is seen as so vital by some that there have been calls for it to be classed as a utility. The Lifeline program has been running since the 80s, and originally provided financial help to those struggling to pay for a phone line. It was expanded in 2008 to include wireless providers, and it is hoped that this third expansion will help more people to get online.
I don't see the downside of this (Score:5, Insightful)
This may even lead more companies to try to compete in the market of providing broadband to low-income areas, which would be a good thing as well.
Re:I don't see the downside of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, I'd like Broadband and I'm willing to pay for it.
Re:I don't see the downside of this (Score:4, Insightful)
Seattle is a special case: apparently, your Internet access is fucked up because you keep electing shitty city councilpeople who make rules that ISPs hate. You should quit doing that.
Re:I don't see the downside of this (Score:4, Funny)
I spend a lot of money to live in a nice location in downtown Seattle, and cable TV and Internet are not available on my block. DSL is spotty, and since I live on the top floor, there's no way to make it work. The cabling to the building and inside the building is just too old.
Doesn't sound like such a nice location to me.
The downside is taxpayers... (Score:3, Insightful)
...subsidizing a non-essential good for other people.
The downside is the federal government sticking its nose into something that's none of its business, in defiance of the 10th Amendment.
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Spoken like a true Anonymous Coward.
Internet access is nearly as important as electricity in our modern age. I'd place it as more important than phones. A phone can call a friend... the internet shows you the world.
Re:The downside is taxpayers... (Score:4, Insightful)
Spoken like a true Anonymous Coward.
Internet access is nearly as important as electricity in our modern age. I'd place it as more important than phones. A phone can call a friend... the internet shows you the world.
If you feel that way, volunteer your own money. You seem to be a spendthrift when it comes to using other people's money.
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Spoken like a true Anonymous Coward.
Internet access is nearly as important as electricity in our modern age. I'd place it as more important than phones. A phone can call a friend... the internet shows you the world.
If you feel that way, volunteer your own money. You seem to be a spendthrift when it comes to using other people's money.
If you want to invade Iraq, volunteer your own money. If you want to bail out banks, volunteer your own money. If you want to stop and frisk black people, volunteer your own money. If you want to drive on highways, volunteer your own money. If you want to create the Internet, volunteer your own money.
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You clearly haven't thought this through. How can you defend only half the country? how can you obtain middle east security for just half the country?
Really, I mean it, think it through.
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Maybe you believe that the "social compact" requires some, most likely not you, to have their money taken and then given to what YOU believe in. Since this "social compact" is not law, how about we just go with the Constitution. And if YOU wish to be charitable and donate broadband access to people, you do that. My funds earmarked for charity will go elsewhere.
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... what, because the only legitimate alternative to state-subsidized internet access is "resignation from the social compact"? What about drawing a line a little closer to the "bare essentials", construed strictly?
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Internet access is nearly as important as electricity in our modern age.
Perhaps. But why not just give the poor a basic income supplement, and let them decide for themselves what to spend it on? Some of them may use it for Internet, but others may use it to buy food or medicine. Why should the government presume to know their priorities better than they do.
Golly, I wonder if any politicians supporting this program received campaign contributions from Comcast and TWC.
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Because, as amazing as Basic Income would be, the outrage would be tremendous if anyone got close to passing it.
It's the best solution, but in today's political climate and for the forseeable future, it's a total non-starter.
(Also, the FCC isn't really the agency that's able to give poor people cash directly).
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Thank you for pointing out that the needy ought to receive more than a patchwork of bandaids. As a long-time flirter with libertarianism and a hater of nanny state excess, it does nonetheless seem to me that unconditional basic income is an idea whose time is due. It should also not involve insulting hoops to jump through to qualify. I do think that basic housing and basic nutrition and of course basic healthcare do need to be separated from any "mad money" which could be squandered unwisely and self-destru
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Because no service the government provides for people is not being abused, and the easier it to abuse, the more people are doing it. It's impossible for handouts to NOT be abused, even when you give food stamps that have limited purpose uses, people sell it for pennies on the dollar to buy drugs/alcohol/tobacco.
I consider myself a libertarian, but also believe that you can't just let people go without the basic necessities... however, the only really acceptable way is one that can't be abused. If that mea
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I shouldn't have to, but wearily I hasten to add that frivolous shit must not be allowed to squeeze into these programs.
Agreed.
That means frivolous cosmetic surgery, frivolous sex-change mutilation, degenerate drug binging, etc.
Oh, you were talking about the recipients. I thought you meant the program providers. carry on.
Re:The downside is taxpayers... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd place it as more important than phones. A phone can call a friend...
Or a phone can allow the school to call you when you child is taken ill. Or your child can call you when they are in trouble and need help. Or the hospital can call you to tell you your child is there. Or you can call the police when you need help. Or you can call home to get someone to come bail you out of jail. Or ...
None of which "being online" does very well at.
"Being online" is nice. Some people have restructured their lives to make it more important to them, but that's their choice, not a requirement.
... the internet shows you the world.
Yes, very nice when you don't have enough money to drive to the next city over, to see the world of places you can never afford to go. Will "the internet" show you directions to the library where you can use a public internet system?
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An example would be a multi-day fever. I had a 99f fever for server days and spiked to 103f. When I looked on the internet and called a nurse's hotline, everything said to see a doctor. Not because I'm in danger, but because you need to "ask" a doctor. I got to the ER and the doctor just said "Take some ibuprofen,
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Will "the internet" show you directions to the library where you can use a public internet system?
Of course it will.
I agree with pretty much everything you said, though - what are most people going to do when handed free internet? Facebook? And of course they can afford a computer to do all this with, right? Or is that the next thing we'll be handing out?
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Compared to a simple cell phone, "being online" is much less capable as a "telephone". Those who have rearranged their
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The internet is a "Digital Highway" and just like roads should be made readily publicly accessible. It is an essential element of modern democracy and, it provides essential access to the digital economy.
It provides access to all that is humanity to the whole of humanity.
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...subsidizing a non-essential good for other people.
The downside is the federal government sticking its nose into something that's none of its business, in defiance of the 10th Amendment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There is no reason why, in a society which has reached the general level of wealth ours has, the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom; that is: some minimum of food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve health. Nor is there any reason why the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance in providing for those common hazards of life against which few can make adequate provision.
-- T
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The government has spent billions of dollars subsidizing broadband for the middle class. Actually everyone but the middle class benefited the most as the poor can't afford it and the rich could have afforded it anyways.
Now it can be argued that much of those billions were wasted by expecting private enterprise to actually invest those subsidies on infrastructure but it was still tax payers money given to private industry to supply broadband to the middle class.
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I am failing to see your logic, perhaps because I am not looking so desperately for a reason to justify this move by the fcc.
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I'm not trying to justify this move (or the opposite), just countering the argument that the middle class doesn't benefit from the government throwing around money.
Where I am (BC), the government basically gave the phone system that us taxpayers created away to private industry as private industry is always supposed to be better. Now I get the internet over a 26.4 dial-up connection which has been going down almost weekly due to copper thieves and takes 8+ hours to get fixed. So not only no internet but not
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Even Walmart or McDonalds require you to apply online and will communicate with you via email.
I guess then that the shortage of workers due to only taking internet applications has forced them to raise wages, right?
No? Then something about your argument is complete shit. You figure out what it is.
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The downsides that I see are:
1) Most towns already have free internet access at the local libraries so we are subsidizing something that already exists.
2) Even if you wanted it in their homes, it would be much cheaper in most cases to run broadband to low income apartment
complexes than it would be subsidize each person in that complex. Are there any plans to try to "group" the access to
Sure, no downside (Score:2, Insightful)
Lets not stop there. After we give the low income their free porn and Xbox connections, lets keep taking money from those that have it and give it to those who want it for other things too, No downside there, after all, the supply of money to give away is infinite. We can never run out. And we don't have to worry about America's crumbling infrastructure. Once we realize that that is really a problem we can take more money from those who have it. We can just keep taking and giving.
Of course, a slight negat
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I'm poor and I'm against this (Score:2, Redundant)
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We are much less likely to gather blackmail material on the poor at the library. What do you think free internet is for?
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Download the porn to a thumb drive.
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You have to jump though some pretty shitty loops at my local library to prove you're a city tax payer. If you're not then you can't use the computers.
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Well that's great.
As long as your local library exists.
And is accessible when you need it.
And close enough for you to get to.
And has a working computer available for you in the time frame you have.
No. That's not so great. That sucks.
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Libraries offer free internet access.
And who needs cell phones? You can make calls in telephone booths.
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Phone booth were pretty much gone by the 90's. Even though pay phones existed.
Shame actually. They should bring them back, better for privacy and not annoying other people.
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Libraries offer free internet access.
Yes, and the libraries love it when you bring in your home computer. I'm sorry, I'm poor, I can not afford a laptop or a tablet, but I did get a free computer off craigslist, so where can I set this up at the library?
You go enjoy the library, I avoid them because of the people that go there.
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Our libraries have computers in the library that you can use. Want to download videos? Use a thumb drive.
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That's the "poor" experience. You get services, they just aren't usa
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See my comment later about free WiFi.
Do they ever follow up? (Score:3)
From helping with education and job hunting, to allowing for home working
All noble and good. But will the government even bother to follow up and see if it makes any difference? It's one thing to help people improve their place in life, but if all this does is provide free entertainment I'm not so sure. Maybe there should be at least some strings attached to it.
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Re:Do they ever follow up? (Score:5, Insightful)
in at least some cases the cost of following up is greater than the amount saved by booting those that abuse the system. see: drug testing for welfare recipients
so, is the money actually what's important to you? or are you just a hardass that can't stand to see someone get something for free on principle?
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can't stand to see someone get something for free on principle?
For many people that is, on principle, a bad thing, unless there's a demonstrable benefit.
The benefit may seem self-evident to some people, but others may need it identified and measured.
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those people are assholes. I'd love to give everything to everyone for free.
basic supply and demand makes that pretty impossible for now, but maybe one day we'll have replicators. a guy can dream.
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So would you rather we put a gun to your head and make you cough up $50 and have $10 of it go to waste, or put a gun to your head and make you cough up $80 ($40 plus another $40 to make sure the first $40 wasn't wasted)?
(Note that those are the only two choices. We have a gun to your head, remember? Refuse to choose and we pull the trigger.)
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What nobility ... what goodwill ... what a brave new progressive world.
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Those people disagree with you. If you prefer calling them names to engaging them in dialogue, you might not be as different from them as you think.
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can't stand to see someone get something for free on principle?
For many people that is, on principle, a bad thing, unless there's a demonstrable benefit.
The benefit may seem self-evident to some people, but others may need it identified and measured.
Paul Krugman discussed that. The Republicans believe that government is bad, on principle. If the government does anything good, it would lead to people believing the government is good. So they must destroy all examples of the government doing anything good.
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Government IS bad... necessary, but BAD. That's why the founders of the U.S. wrote the U.S. Constitution - specifically to limit government. That the government couldn't help but corrupt, side step, or shred the constitution is only proof.
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From the people I've talked to directly, at least, drug testing welfare recipients isn't actually about saving money. They literally want people to choose between drugs and starvation. It's basically all about punishment, it's an obsession of the right wing (and doesn't seem much like small government). I mean, they wrap it up nicely in a compassionate bow... threaten peoples' lives to get them off drugs and they'll be better off for it, ends justify the means... but I'm not convinced it actually works t
Re:Do they ever follow up? (Score:4, Informative)
Whether you agree or disagree with drug testing, the cost is just a ruse. Not only could you test randomly, you could do like the IRS does audits
and only test 1 in 10 or 1 in 1000 people making the cost negligible. You could also use the already existing anonymous welfare fraud reporting
system for people to report suspected drug users so you could more carefully select which people you "audit".
The big thing I hear about with drug testing though is that it hurts the children but if the parent is on drugs and we are not going to take the children
away then maybe a compromise would be to continue to give them food stamps but at the same time continuously monitor them for drug rehab
because it's not good for the children to be in a house with a drug addict either.
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in at least some cases the cost of following up is greater than the amount saved by booting those that abuse the system. see: drug testing for welfare recipients
so, is the money actually what's important to you? or are you just a hardass that can't stand to see someone get something for free on principle?
In cases where you are following up on every person then yes I can see that but just like with drug testing, there is no reason that you
couldn't do random sampling of 1 in 10 or even 1 in 1000. The OP never said that you had to followup with everyone but rather if they
would do any followup at all to see if it's making any different or if this would just be another government program that is assumed to
be working as intended. I give you "cash for clunkers" as an example of government waste that did nothing
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From helping with education and job hunting, to allowing for home working
All noble and good. But will the government even bother to follow up and see if it makes any difference? It's one thing to help people improve their place in life, but if all this does is provide free entertainment I'm not so sure. Maybe there should be at least some strings attached to it.
Maybe we can have a big brother watching over the poor to make sure they only use our charity for worthy purposes.
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but if all this does is provide free entertainment I'm not so sure
Don't underestimate the value of free entertainment. Sometimes that guy coming home from his second job really needs to unwind a little before he gets his 6 hours of sleep, and a little YouTube is probably a healthier and cheaper alternative to an after-work beer. Also, entertainment has traditionally proven useful to help prevent the proles from revolting against the bourgeoisie. It's generally not a great idea to insist that the poorest be made more and more miserable for their own good.
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Will you even bother to follow-up and see if your precious strings are useful and effective, and not feelgood measures yourself, that are only implemented because they SEEM right, not because they do much?
Think about it.
There are some people who just get a malicious enjoyment out of condemning the laziness,
bad habits and inferiority of others.
Why do you want to take that simple pleasure away from him?
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There are some people who just get a malicious enjoyment out of condemning the laziness, bad habits and inferiority of others.
Why do you want to take that simple pleasure away from him?
No, the real difference here is that the people that don't want to subsidize poor people think the poor people are not inferior, they're mostly just making terrible life choices - we thing they could do better. What liberals seem to believe is akin to the "soft bigotry of low expectations" applied to lower class. What I want is for people to help themselves. Given the realization that some people simply can't, I accept assistance programs... but not "broadband."
um maybe (Score:2)
> From helping with education and job hunting, to allowing for home working,
I get both sides of the argument. (Score:2)
No one wants to see a hard working man injured on the job and thus unable to care for his family.... but there are many abusers of the system who collect monthly disability checks to augment a lifestyle that clashes with making it to work every morning.
Bottom line for me (and YMMV) is that though charity and paying it forward can be abused, that's no re
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No, there aren't. The "welfare queen" narrative is 1% fact to 99% fantasy.
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Wikipedia cites some pretty reliable looking studies under its 'Welfare Fraud' article.
US Department of Labor reports 1.9% fraud rate in 2001. LA Times reports that 24% of new applications have some form of "inaccuracy", which is anything from colossal lies to small mistakes.
Your turn. Cite some opposing statistics.
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No one wants to see a poor, single mother be unable to feed her children,
Oh, I think you are underestimating the vastness and ubiquity of porn fetishes available on the Internet. There is for sure a Tube devoted to this somewhere on the Internet.
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No one wants to see a poor, single mother be unable to feed her children,
Oh, I think you are underestimating the vastness and ubiquity of porn fetishes available on the Internet. There is for sure a Tube devoted to this somewhere on the Internet.
Well hell, that's why I surf here... to broaden my horizons, as it were.
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It possible to believe that tolerating some abuse is an acceptable price to pay to ensure that charity reaches the need without creating a culture that celebrates fraud.
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It possible to believe that tolerating some abuse is an acceptable price to pay to ensure that charity reaches the need without creating a culture that celebrates fraud.
I don't think that the word "charity" means what you think that it means.
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Let me be the first one to .. (Score:2)
beta 2 (Score:2, Insightful)
So is this new retarded fucking share button on Slashdot BETA 2. FIRE YOUR DESIGNERS Slashdot and find someone with half a fucking clue.
How about (Score:3)
Who needs Congress? (Score:4, Interesting)
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additional mandates like this without direction from Congress
Oh, was *today* the day that we were going to go back to Rule-of-Law in this country?
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It's not an additional mandate. It's allowing people to spend their landline subsidy on broadband instead.
This is how the government works. Congress makes up a rule like "supply telephone subsidy to poor people". Some bureaucrat figures out how to verify that they are actually poor, how to deliver the subsidy, and whether it has to be a voice line or can be a data line.
Modem (Score:2)
passive voice (Score:2)
"[...] is seen [...] is seen as so vital by some [...] it is hoped [...]"
Anonymous, unquantified strangers say so, so it must be right.
More revenue for companies (Score:3)
I understand the reason that people might want to consider this, but on the other side of the fence is a company that will benefit from all that extra cash from new customers who could not otherwise afford the service. What will the company who benefits do in return for all this extra revenue coming from tax dollars? If the answer is "nothing" then I'd be in favor of dropping the idea.
Government subsidies increase prices (Score:3)
Government interventions where they pump money into markets on behalf of the poor do three things:
1) They help the poor.
2) They harm the middle class.
3) They have no impact on the wealthy.
Education, housing, medical care - government pumping money into the system just drives up prices to the detriment of those with moderate incomes.
Then Wall Street can step and say, "Hey, debt! I mean how much is your life (or your kid's future) worth to you? That's how much it'll cost ya."
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By definition the middle class doesn't need help from the government. The middle class is self-sufficient.
If you need assistance from the government to make ends meet then you are definitely not middle class.
Well that just about covers all the necessities. (Score:2)
"I need a job!" said no guy ever once he figured out how to sign up for all this free stuff.
Musk hurry the fuck up with that Mars Colony already, or somebody get the zombie apocalypse rolling the level of stupid on planet Earth is reaching critical mass.
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ISP Prices will go up (Score:3)
Mark my words. Internet service will get more expensive because of this. Just like everything else that receives subsidies.
Typical government thinking it can make things cheaper just by waiving a wand...
AT&T DSL (Score:2)
meh (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not entirely sure any of the stated goals *requires* broadband.
One can easily job-hunt on the web at 1meg.
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Do you mean ReaganPhone from the mid 80's or BushPhone from 2005 when it was expanded to cellphones (with the first phone issued during the last few weeks of Bush's administration)?
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pretty much... soon to be clinton2.0/bush2.0 phone
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