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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."
And still misses the real issue here. If you want to narrow the "Digital Divide" stop granting monopolies to companies like Comcast. Once you have some real competition in the market there's no reason that people who need the internet won't be able to buy it for themselves.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...
Is there any reason that internet in NYC should cost 4 times what it does in Zurich or Seoul, except and exploitative monopoly ? The U.S. has places were the population density will make any kind of communication service more expensive but NYC is one of the most densely populated areas on the planet and is not one of them.
Free quality education, free quality medical care and free child care would help more.
t seems to me that if you're going to give a company a de facto monopoly of both television distribution and Internet, it would be a fair trade-off to require that they provide a very basic level of service to poor people for free. We can quibble over the details, but for example, providing the over-the-air channels and a 1mbps symmetrical connection seems fair.
These companies don't like to admit it, but they're providing exclusive access to public infrastructure. I think they should be counting their lucky stars that they're not as regulated as other utilities.
I wish governments would use taxes to pay for benefits for the poor instead of making us pay through hidden costs by forcing companies to give "free" or reduced cost services, which are made up for in higher fees for the service. The same goes for "affordable housing" where developers have to provide reduced cost housing, which is paid for in higher cost of housing for everyone else.
I have no problem with providing benefits, but If governments want to provide these benefits, then provide them through taxes where they are shared among all taxpayers (why should a Comcast customer pay to subsidize "free" interenet for the poor, while an AT&T UVerse customer does not?), everyone can see what they are paying to the full cost of providing these benefits is known, and the local taxes are tax deductible themselves.
cheaper the them having to get all of that in prison / jail.
So your theory is that giving people free housing, food, internet, etc. makes them less likely to be criminals? Do you have any evidence to support that? By conditioning people to believe that they are entitled to something for nothing, we may be creating more crime, not less. Many crimes occurs in criminal "hotspots" where there are few jobs, and few social barriers to a criminal lifestyle. Prior to the 1960s, this was not true, because with no income flowing in, those hotspots were economically unsustainable. People would move away to where they could get a job. But now, with welfare, food stamps, housing projects, etc. people can stay even without an economic base and little hope of honest employment, and crime festers. Instead of helping people stay in poor neighborhoods, maybe we should be helping them to leave. A good place to start would be to ban discriminatory zoning laws.
Because this is impossible.
Someone has to pay for purchasing, installing, and maintaining cables in the ground/undersea, switches, routers, head ends, etc. (And, being government provided, likely means the associated labor would have to be Union in many areas which will increase the costs).
I assume you are you offering to pick up the cost. (You must be very wealthy although I don't recall seeing drinkypoo on Forbes 100 list, but I assume you're Bill Gates or someone similar using a alias). Or, perhaps you think I should pay for it? Who? If everybody pays for it, then it isn't free for all and, in fact, is free for none (even those who don't use it).
The government doesn't provide electricity, water, food, sewers, phone service, bus service, or trash pickup "free for all". Why should they do so for internet access?
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
The devil's in the details, isn't it? If you go through my posts, I'm for ensuring everyone has access to internet, but against doing a lot of these things as long as the US doesn't have its undocumented (fuck PC... ILLEGAL) immigrant problem under control. Makes for a complicated problem, and that's why I'm not a politician, or even an activist. I'd just fuck it up.
That said, I pay more in property tax than a minimum salary worker makes pre-tax, and my wife and I together pay more income tax than the average household income in the US. The only "tax shelters" we have is our 401ks, and only real deductions are the property tax and mortgage interests (I guess I deduct my transit cards too...how greedy of me).
So that probably pays for my share?