Except that the rich spend much less of their income on stuff other than groceries/rent/mortgage than the poor and middle class. Making those exclusions helps the poor, but still shifts the burden toward middle class and lower-income households.
Understood, but what I'm saying is that, if you're a Comcast customer, you don't _need_ to subscribe to a full TV package to get HBO.
In Seattle, Internet Plus will get you 50Mbps Internet, plus the broadcast channels (aka Limited Basic), plus HBO, for $45/month. Rises to $65/month in the second year. 25Mbps service is $5/month less.
Just to be clear, it's not as if all the reporters on the White House beat run all their work through the White House press office. This story is talking about material produced by the "pool." These are low-impact, run of the mill stories (President met with Cub Scouts, talked about importance of youth exercise, etc.) where it would be silly to have every news outlet cover them with their own reporter. So, the journalists on the White House beat rotate through the pool, one person (maybe this week it's the reporter from the Chicago Tribune) writes the story about the Cub Scout meeting, and it gets distributed to all the outlets. Essentially, it's a mini version of the Associated Press.
- Comcast would appeal license denial and apparently would likely win it (why exactly?)
So really, the 'peoples' voice in all this is essentially irrelevant. Why does this sound wholly, unAmerican?
The law allows the city to block a license transfer (that's what's happening here) only if the city can make the case that the transferee (Comcast) doesn't have the capability or resources to run the system. In other words, if Charter wanted to transfer the license to Bob's Cable Hut and Bait Shop, which had total financial resources of $83 in a checking account and had only Bob as an employee, the transfer could be blocked. While people may not LIKE Comcast, there's no doubt that they are fully capable of running a cable system, and have sufficient financial resources to do so.
Don't know what market you're in, but if you're in a Comcast market, you can get 50Mbps broadband plus broadcast channels and HBO for $50/month, for the first year. After that, it rises to $70/month. Search for Internet Plus with Blast.
Wow, looking at those bitcoin ATM maps (http://coinatmradar.com/), it looks like these kiosks are charging a 5.5% fee for conversion into "fiat" currency. That's a huge forex spread, and amounts to an enormous ATM fee.
Back in the day, airlines provided us with food and entertainment. Arguably, it was lousy food and entertainment but it was supplied none the less. Now we have no choice but to bring our own.
I'm (partially) with you on food, but entertainment? 20 years ago, the entertainment on a flight to Europe (or across the country) was one movie, shown on an overhead screen, with terrible sound through uncomfortable headphones. Had already seen it? Tough. Didn't like the movie? Tough. Now, most flights of similar length have hundreds of choices, on-demand, on your own personal screen, plus dozens of audio channels. It's an ENORMOUS improvement.
BLS numbers are highly robust, and yes, I do believe them, since they match actual consumer spending patterns. Only 13% of US consumer spending is for food, after all, and only 8% is for food at home (rest is restaurants).
"the thoughts go to the fined drivers, hoping they won't ever be caught carrying their grandmother to the supermarket then have to explain how they dared"
Unless they're planning on charging granny for the trip to the supermarket, this isn't relevant.
Didn't these guys have to take an oath to defend the Constitution?
Its time to add teeth to Oath Violations. Loss of job, loss of pension, jail time. To argue that some silly law or court ruling overrides the First Amendment should be a criminal offense.
Nobody is arguing that some "silly law or court ruling overrides the First Amendment." The court rulings define what does and doesn't fall afoul of the First Amendment. The First Amendment's speech protections aren't universal (i.e. libel, incitement to violence), and they aren't specific to all cases, so the Constitution has to be interpreted, and the courts, for better or for worse, have to handle that.
The objection to Citizens United is that it too TOO broad a view of the First Amendment, by granting First Amendment protections to speech that opponents of the decision didn't think should get those protections.
Not only that, but a big portion of the increased wages were a bonus that depended on satisfactory performance in house visits. Yup, if the factory rep decided that you weren't keeping your home clean enough, or thought you were drinking too much off the job, poof went a big portion of your comp.
I'm actually extremely well-informed on this topic. You really should look into it, however, since I think you're not understanding the situation. The regulations that have "prevented" Google from building out are regulations that other providers (i.e. cable and Telco) have long had to abide by. So, Google is saying they'll only build out if they get special treatment that wasn't available to the incumbents.
Google has explicitly said that they will only build out in areas that are willing to work with them, and that means (thus far) offer them concessions (right of way, street cabinet placement, waiver of requirement that they build the entire municipality) which haven't been available to the incumbents. For example, the second article below talks about the deal Google got in Kansas City, which includes the opportunity to place their street cabinets on public land at no cost (something AT&T & TWC can't do), and the ability to put fiber on city-owned poles for about half what TWC is paying, and no requirement for a citywide buildout.
We don't recapture military costs. We don't recapture climate costs (we can't even quantify that). We don't recapture pollution costs. We increasingly don't recapture road maintenance/construction costs.
We should be doing all three (although the last would be better captured through a tax based on vehicle weight and mileage travelled). Gas tax is certainly regressive, but we could resolve that with a refundable income tax credit for gas tax that declines as income increases.
On the other hand, in the US most major metropolitan areas (there are exceptions) have sold monopoly or duopoly franchises on internet service, which also distorts prices horribly and in other directions. I live in one of these areas, as do most of the people I know (I get to chose between mostly tolerable but pricey Cox, and utterly abhorrent AT&T - for practical purposes just one choice).
It's _extremely_ unlikely that your area has a legal duopoly or monopoly. Those arrangements have been banned for years now. No doubt, there's a natural (i.e. economic) duopoly, but that's different.
I'm curious - what are these artificial barriers? In essentially the entire US (with a few very tiny exceptions), if you want to build out your own fiber and offer internet access, you can. You'll need to show financial viability (i.e. you have the resources to do the buildout), so the municipality doesn't end up with stuff strung on their poles rotting away, and half-dug trenches), but you can do it from a regulatory perspective.
The barrier is economic - it's a terrible business model. You're looking at $600 per home passed, at least, plus a couple hundred bucks (at least) to connect each customer. Plus your back-end (routing, backbone connectivity, etc. etc.). Then, you need to market, and convince people to leave their cable or Telco offering to sign up with you. Since they've often got triple play, you might need to consider offering video and phone service as well. Video programming costs are very high (particularly if you're small), and have fixed minimums.
Bottom line, pretty much anyone who's tried overbuilding has either (a) gone bankrupt (i.e. RCN), (b) have had a very large investment in place to protect (i.e. Verizon FiOS), or (c) not needed to actually make money doing it (i.e. Google).
Because it's optically deceptive when talking about absolute numbers. Going from 30 to 35MPG is a 5MPG increase. Going from 10 to 15MPG is also a 5MPG increase. In the first case, your fuel bill will drop by 14%. In the second, by 33%. So, a 5MPG improvement in fuel economy means very different things depending on your starting position.
How is that any more deceptive than using g/100m? You'll still experience different percentage changes in your bill when you measure in g/100m, depending on your starting point.
(I'll admit to some uncertainty here just so I don't look like a complete idiot when you point out where I've gone wrong, but I don't think I have at the moment)
Going from 3 g/100m to 2 g/100m is a 1 g/100m decrease. Going from 7 g/100m to 6 g/100m is also a 1 g/100m increase. In the first case, your fuel bill will drop by 33%. In the second, it'll drop by 14%. It'll be the same absolute decrease in both cases (which it wouldn't be in the MPG case), but who looks at that when considering deals?
I think the whole MPG/GPM thing has been blown out of proportion just for the sake of someone showing how right they are.
Fundamentally, it's absolute $ that matter, not % change in $. If I'm trading off cost of car, or performance of car, against fuel economy, I don't care that much what the percentage change in my fuel bill is going to be, I care about what the absolute value of the change is going to be. If car X is $1000 more than car Y, but gets better fuel economy, I care whether I'm going to save >$1000 in fuel expenses, not what % my fuel bill is going to change. By the same token, if car X and car Y are the same price, but car X gets better fuel economy, while car Y is more fun to drive, I care about how much (in $) I'll be saving by buying the less fun car.
I haven't driven a car in the past 15 years that didn't have a "distance to empty" option on the dash.
Anyway, MPG's a useless metric for figuring out whether you need to stop for gas, unless you also know how big your tank is. If you do, then you're doing the math in your head to duplicate the distance to empty calculation on your dash.
Finally, the portion of the population who routinely take drives with >150 miles between gas stations is tremendously small.
Slashdot Mirror
Probably part of it - legalized abortion also likely played a role. Changes in policing also likely played a role. As with most things, multifactor.
http://www.economist.com/blogs...
Except that the rich spend much less of their income on stuff other than groceries/rent/mortgage than the poor and middle class. Making those exclusions helps the poor, but still shifts the burden toward middle class and lower-income households.
Understood, but what I'm saying is that, if you're a Comcast customer, you don't _need_ to subscribe to a full TV package to get HBO.
In Seattle, Internet Plus will get you 50Mbps Internet, plus the broadcast channels (aka Limited Basic), plus HBO, for $45/month. Rises to $65/month in the second year. 25Mbps service is $5/month less.
http://www.comcast.com/interne...
Just to be clear, it's not as if all the reporters on the White House beat run all their work through the White House press office. This story is talking about material produced by the "pool." These are low-impact, run of the mill stories (President met with Cub Scouts, talked about importance of youth exercise, etc.) where it would be silly to have every news outlet cover them with their own reporter. So, the journalists on the White House beat rotate through the pool, one person (maybe this week it's the reporter from the Chicago Tribune) writes the story about the Cub Scout meeting, and it gets distributed to all the outlets. Essentially, it's a mini version of the Associated Press.
I really doubt it, given that Charter is the one SELLING the system to Comcast.
and from the article,
- City Manager can ignore council vote.
- Comcast would appeal license denial and apparently would likely win it (why exactly?)
So really, the 'peoples' voice in all this is essentially irrelevant. Why does this sound wholly, unAmerican?
The law allows the city to block a license transfer (that's what's happening here) only if the city can make the case that the transferee (Comcast) doesn't have the capability or resources to run the system. In other words, if Charter wanted to transfer the license to Bob's Cable Hut and Bait Shop, which had total financial resources of $83 in a checking account and had only Bob as an employee, the transfer could be blocked. While people may not LIKE Comcast, there's no doubt that they are fully capable of running a cable system, and have sufficient financial resources to do so.
Don't know what market you're in, but if you're in a Comcast market, you can get 50Mbps broadband plus broadcast channels and HBO for $50/month, for the first year. After that, it rises to $70/month. Search for Internet Plus with Blast.
Time Warner and Time Warner Cable are two entirely different companies. They split apart in 2009, and have no connection except for the name.
Good question. If it were me, I would definitely go for the 1-in-a-million chance for $100k versus a guaranteed $2k now.
I would love to play any game of chance with you. 1 in a million chance of $100k (expected value of $0.10) is preferable to a 100% chance of $2000?
Wow, looking at those bitcoin ATM maps (http://coinatmradar.com/), it looks like these kiosks are charging a 5.5% fee for conversion into "fiat" currency. That's a huge forex spread, and amounts to an enormous ATM fee.
Back in the day, airlines provided us with food and entertainment. Arguably, it was lousy food and entertainment but it was supplied none the less. Now we have no choice but to bring our own.
I'm (partially) with you on food, but entertainment? 20 years ago, the entertainment on a flight to Europe (or across the country) was one movie, shown on an overhead screen, with terrible sound through uncomfortable headphones. Had already seen it? Tough. Didn't like the movie? Tough. Now, most flights of similar length have hundreds of choices, on-demand, on your own personal screen, plus dozens of audio channels. It's an ENORMOUS improvement.
BLS numbers are highly robust, and yes, I do believe them, since they match actual consumer spending patterns. Only 13% of US consumer spending is for food, after all, and only 8% is for food at home (rest is restaurants).
http://www.bls.gov/news.releas...
Not quite. $100 in 1969 is $648 today.
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cp...
"the thoughts go to the fined drivers, hoping they won't ever be caught carrying their grandmother to the supermarket then have to explain how they dared"
Unless they're planning on charging granny for the trip to the supermarket, this isn't relevant.
If Cory Doctorow believed in sending copyright infringement complaints, one would be on its way to you now.
http://www.johnjosephadams.com...
Didn't these guys have to take an oath to defend the Constitution?
Its time to add teeth to Oath Violations. Loss of job, loss of pension, jail time.
To argue that some silly law or court ruling overrides the First Amendment should be a criminal offense.
Nobody is arguing that some "silly law or court ruling overrides the First Amendment." The court rulings define what does and doesn't fall afoul of the First Amendment. The First Amendment's speech protections aren't universal (i.e. libel, incitement to violence), and they aren't specific to all cases, so the Constitution has to be interpreted, and the courts, for better or for worse, have to handle that.
The objection to Citizens United is that it too TOO broad a view of the First Amendment, by granting First Amendment protections to speech that opponents of the decision didn't think should get those protections.
Not only that, but a big portion of the increased wages were a bonus that depended on satisfactory performance in house visits. Yup, if the factory rep decided that you weren't keeping your home clean enough, or thought you were drinking too much off the job, poof went a big portion of your comp.
I'm actually extremely well-informed on this topic. You really should look into it, however, since I think you're not understanding the situation. The regulations that have "prevented" Google from building out are regulations that other providers (i.e. cable and Telco) have long had to abide by. So, Google is saying they'll only build out if they get special treatment that wasn't available to the incumbents.
Google has explicitly said that they will only build out in areas that are willing to work with them, and that means (thus far) offer them concessions (right of way, street cabinet placement, waiver of requirement that they build the entire municipality) which haven't been available to the incumbents. For example, the second article below talks about the deal Google got in Kansas City, which includes the opportunity to place their street cabinets on public land at no cost (something AT&T & TWC can't do), and the ability to put fiber on city-owned poles for about half what TWC is paying, and no requirement for a citywide buildout.
http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
http://www.wired.com/2013/07/w...
If anything, the costs decline for additional providers, since the poles are in place, the conduit (if it's underground plant) is often in place, etc.
We don't recapture military costs. We don't recapture climate costs (we can't even quantify that). We don't recapture pollution costs. We increasingly don't recapture road maintenance/construction costs.
We should be doing all three (although the last would be better captured through a tax based on vehicle weight and mileage travelled). Gas tax is certainly regressive, but we could resolve that with a refundable income tax credit for gas tax that declines as income increases.
On the other hand, in the US most major metropolitan areas (there are exceptions) have sold monopoly or duopoly franchises on internet service, which also distorts prices horribly and in other directions. I live in one of these areas, as do most of the people I know (I get to chose between mostly tolerable but pricey Cox, and utterly abhorrent AT&T - for practical purposes just one choice).
It's _extremely_ unlikely that your area has a legal duopoly or monopoly. Those arrangements have been banned for years now. No doubt, there's a natural (i.e. economic) duopoly, but that's different.
I'm curious - what are these artificial barriers? In essentially the entire US (with a few very tiny exceptions), if you want to build out your own fiber and offer internet access, you can. You'll need to show financial viability (i.e. you have the resources to do the buildout), so the municipality doesn't end up with stuff strung on their poles rotting away, and half-dug trenches), but you can do it from a regulatory perspective.
The barrier is economic - it's a terrible business model. You're looking at $600 per home passed, at least, plus a couple hundred bucks (at least) to connect each customer. Plus your back-end (routing, backbone connectivity, etc. etc.). Then, you need to market, and convince people to leave their cable or Telco offering to sign up with you. Since they've often got triple play, you might need to consider offering video and phone service as well. Video programming costs are very high (particularly if you're small), and have fixed minimums.
Bottom line, pretty much anyone who's tried overbuilding has either (a) gone bankrupt (i.e. RCN), (b) have had a very large investment in place to protect (i.e. Verizon FiOS), or (c) not needed to actually make money doing it (i.e. Google).
Because it's optically deceptive when talking about absolute numbers. Going from 30 to 35MPG is a 5MPG increase. Going from 10 to 15MPG is also a 5MPG increase. In the first case, your fuel bill will drop by 14%. In the second, by 33%. So, a 5MPG improvement in fuel economy means very different things depending on your starting position.
How is that any more deceptive than using g/100m? You'll still experience different percentage changes in your bill when you measure in g/100m, depending on your starting point.
(I'll admit to some uncertainty here just so I don't look like a complete idiot when you point out where I've gone wrong, but I don't think I have at the moment)
Going from 3 g/100m to 2 g/100m is a 1 g/100m decrease. Going from 7 g/100m to 6 g/100m is also a 1 g/100m increase. In the first case, your fuel bill will drop by 33%. In the second, it'll drop by 14%. It'll be the same absolute decrease in both cases (which it wouldn't be in the MPG case), but who looks at that when considering deals?
I think the whole MPG/GPM thing has been blown out of proportion just for the sake of someone showing how right they are.
Fundamentally, it's absolute $ that matter, not % change in $. If I'm trading off cost of car, or performance of car, against fuel economy, I don't care that much what the percentage change in my fuel bill is going to be, I care about what the absolute value of the change is going to be. If car X is $1000 more than car Y, but gets better fuel economy, I care whether I'm going to save >$1000 in fuel expenses, not what % my fuel bill is going to change. By the same token, if car X and car Y are the same price, but car X gets better fuel economy, while car Y is more fun to drive, I care about how much (in $) I'll be saving by buying the less fun car.
I haven't driven a car in the past 15 years that didn't have a "distance to empty" option on the dash.
Anyway, MPG's a useless metric for figuring out whether you need to stop for gas, unless you also know how big your tank is. If you do, then you're doing the math in your head to duplicate the distance to empty calculation on your dash.
Finally, the portion of the population who routinely take drives with >150 miles between gas stations is tremendously small.