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FCC's Spectrum Auction Approaches $20B in Bids
An anonymous reader writes "After 32 rounds, the FCC has raised more than $18.8 billion in its 700-MHz auction, well surpassing its own early estimates of attracting between $10-15 billion in offers.
That's undoubtedly good news for the agency. Since the auction began on Jan. 24, both the FCC and wireless experts have expressed ongoing concerns about meeting those estimates. Once the auction was underway, those worries were compounded by a shaky economic forecast and the possibility of a looming recession."
Yes, the 3G auctions in the end did neither the operators nor the subscribers much good. The operators find that they are so burdened with debt that they have to press high charges on fragile business models. Mobile data is very, very useful but access is too expensive in many places for applications to be established. In fact although 3G has been around in Europe for several years now using it has been too expensive for most people.
See my journal, I write things there
Because the FCC can now approach Congress with: "Look! We made $XX billion last year for you! We need some more money."
Congress, of course, won't realize that these auctions are a very limited-use thing. They can't re-auction them every year.
I think we should be more worried about paying down our debt http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ than the trillion dollar budget. And even still $20b $1t. Especially considering that the dollar is down in value which makes that number look even worse when we pay out to foreign companies.
Layne
"Equitable" as in for example estabilishing a publicly-owned access infrastructure along with the rules of accessing it, say like, oh I dunno ... roads? Electrical grid?
This is no different, merely a different set of technical issues has to be addressed. Note that this does not imply government running a "business" but rather a type of civil engineering activity governments were involved in since times immemorial, such as road and bridge building.
The "sounding pretty smart to you" method involves selling what is not theirs to sell, in order to allow some monopolist to gouge the public unopposed, while the government gets to pocket a one time bribe and spend it promptly on some wacko foreign military adventure, thus throwing the money down the drain with no return possible to the taxpayer.
In this way the worst possible outcome is achieved: a unique public resuorce is effectively stolen by private interests in exchange for a bribe and the general public is shafted with no recourse.
This idiotic scenario is a direct equivalent of a government selling all roads and bridges in the country to the highest bidder, thus ensuring that toll-booths pop up right at the end of everybody's drive-way asking for $10 fee to travel every yard or some such, regardless of the direction you take driving, cycling or walking.
The idea behind tax cuts is that the closer you get to the Laffer curve, the closer you get to maximizing tax revenue while minimizing economic damage. If that means temporarily running deficits, OK. Think about it: who gets a higher return on capital, the small business owners who make up the bulk of the top bracket taxpayers in America, or Congress? Getting tax rates below the curve is assumed to be too unlikely to think about right now. From a moral perspective it would be desirable but I think most of us on the Right would settle for practicality.
The problem is that Congress takes the new tax revenue, spends it, and then spends some more. The President can try to slow it down. Unfortunately this President has shown little to no spending restraint, with the mess caused by a bunch of Saudi trust fund brats who thought they could pick up where the Battle of Vienna left off just adding insult to injury. We had a brief reprieve when Gingrich was Speaker of the House but it's been downhill ever since. I doubt a President McCain or President Hillary combined with a Democrat-dominated Congress is going to make any improvement.