Slashdot Mirror
Free Broadband For NYC Public Housing?
First time accepted submitter nomad63 (686331) writes "Earlier this week, the NY Times reported that a group of city and leaders, with NYC public advocate Letitia James at the helm, are pushing for a commitment from Comcast to provide free broadband to the city's public housing and to extend its low-cost Internet Essentials plan (which was created as a condition of the NBC deal). While New York City might be the center of finance and commerce in the U.S., about 1/3 of households don't have an Internet connection, highlighting the huge "digital divide" between the city's wealthy residents and those who can't afford broadband service.In addition to the free service for public housing, the group wants gratis access at shelters for the city's homeless and its victims of domestic violence."
You can't even apply for a job at Burger King without an Internet connection these days.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Im a bit dicey about a lot of this stuff (and I'm canadian... some of it is a good idea, ie: health care, school, etc, but there are limits), but internet IMO makes sense, because its the best tool to get your ass out of poverty. It makes looking for a job, learning, school, making connections, finding ways of saving money, etc, a bazillion times easier.
When I was young, I was very, very poor. Computers were not common. As I hit 5th~ grade or so, they started being quite common, and some teachers started giving bonus points or other advantages to people using computers. Then they would give certain research assignments that could be done in minutes with Encarta at the time, but would take forever with books (gathering pictures, snippets, quotes...).
So someone who didn't have a computer would have to -put several times as much effort in the same assignment. That was time they couldn't put in another subject. Let's put aside how retarded/unfair those assignments were at the time, and put it in today's context...where some college work would be downright impossible. Sure, you can use the school's infrastructure, but that prevents you from being at home and multitasking (doing chores, cooking, taking care of siblings) at the same time.
I'm definitely not for free lunch. If there's no difference between rich and poor, there's no reason to get up your ass and help yourself. But in 2014, the internet is the ultimate tool to get out of a shitty situation. Knowledge is just too important, and a basic connection is too cheap to not give it to everyone. You'll spend more money with all the bullshit social programs, or worse, jail, if they stay in poverty a single more day because they were connection-less.
free CHILD CARE? does ANYWHERE have that?
Yes, it's quite common in Europe.. for example here in Scotland we have free childcare, free healthcare, free education, free prescription medicine.
But we also have private childcare,private healthcare, private education.. we have choice.