FCC Provides Low-Income Families Subsidized Internet

Status
Not open for further replies.
$9.25 monthly limit, that means the gov will pay the ISP $9.25 per household with this service?

If so... wow! The cheapest internet you can get where I live in WV is $130 for 10/5. So yea...
 
$9.25 monthly limit, that means the gov will pay the ISP $9.25 per household with this service?

If so... wow! The cheapest internet you can get where I live in WV is $130 for 10/5. So yea...

Yeah, I'd wish they'd go after these price gouging monopolies before adding subsidies.
 
If we're paying for it, I would like to see conclusive evidence that data caps are at all necessary.

I also don't want to see "cord-cutters" penalized with higher prices for higher caps because they use more bandwidth to get the same news and entertainment online instead of by cable.

Hell, I'd take a wild step and even suggest the government investigates the feasibility of forcibly buying all of the cable over the entire country. Then leasing the bandwidth back to interested parties to promote small business opportunities where local governments have sweet heart deals with big corps. Remember, I am merely suggesting that the idea is investigated thoroughly.

If anyone has any better ideas on how to actually see improvement in the quality, rather than fat cats lining their pockets and sending millions of dollars to politicians, I'm all ears (eyes in this case but that'd read funny).
 

rayden54

Honorable
May 14, 2013
184
0
10,690
I'm curious. What happens to the people who live in an area where there is no service available at 10 Mbps down/1 Mbps up? Where I live internet means $50/month for < 2 Mbps down/15 Kbps up. Do they simply not qualify?

Areas without available broadband also tend to be more isolated which means they'd have an even greater need for a "lifeline."

Are they hoping the possibility of getting a subsidy will convince them to lay new lines? Given that they haven't made any improvements in almost 8 years, I doubt that'll happen.

Personally, that's what I'd much rather them subsidize.
 

svan71

Distinguished
Dec 31, 2007
316
54
18,940
20 trillion in debt folks, i guess people in low income housing collecting food stamps and Obamacare need free internet along with a free phone...its all FREE.
 


LoL, are you jealous of poor people? You could always switch to a minimum wage part-time job where you don't make enough to afford food and rent. There are options here.
 


I know, right? That number thrown around by itself is typically a scare tactic meant for the uninformed. My cousin is still running power lines to places in the U.S. that have never had it before. More water testing proves many areas across the U.S. have unacceptable levels of lead in their drinking water. I really think we're just touching the tip of the iceberg on that issue.

The only conceivable reason to suggest the poor shouldn't have access to broadband is to keep them uninformed and unable to share their experiences with the rest of the world.
 

dstarr3

Distinguished
If we're paying for it, I would like to see conclusive evidence that data caps are at all necessary.

Of course caps aren't necessary. Most ISPs have a cap of around 250-300GB/mo. And wouldn't you know it, if you watched three or four hours of Netflix a night, that'd take up about 250-300GB/mo. There's a reason those numbers are identical. It's because the ONLY reason caps exist is so that you can't rely on only streaming for all of your media and are obligated to pay for your ISP's cable package, as well.

Having to throttle your bandwidth during peak hours, I can kind of get that. It's still embarrassing, but there's technical reasons for that. But data caps are total crap. It makes no sense that an ISP is only able to push x-amount of bytes to your house. Having to push too much bandwidth to too many people at the same time, yeah, that can pose a problem. But there is no such thing as a magic number of bytes that is the upper limit of what an ISP can deliver to your house. It's purely there so they can either charge you more for their cable package, or charge you more for not using their cable package.
 

Borisblade7

Distinguished
Sep 25, 2011
70
0
18,640
$9.25 monthly limit, that means the gov will pay the ISP $9.25 per household with this service?

If so... wow! The cheapest internet you can get where I live in WV is $130 for 10/5. So yea...

It varies massively, you can get plans like that for like $30 here, im paying $45 for 40/10. Many other countries have it dirt cheap or free funny enough. The monopolies are to blame here.

I can get one company or nothing where I am at now, and until Google Fiber came around to many areas nearby, they were raising prices nearly 20% every year while not really increasing speeds. Since google came in, they have really had to finally compete and watch their prices, and their speeds have gone up massively.
 

alextheblue

Distinguished
LoL, are you jealous of poor people? You could always switch to a minimum wage part-time job where you don't make enough to afford food and rent. There are options here.

You laugh but in many areas (especially those with a moderate-to-high cost of living), making 20-35k a year (depending on household size) actually disadvantages you vs. making LESS money and getting access to a PILE of poverty benefits. Including but not limited to EBT (which isn't limited to bread and juice, by the way, shrimp, steaks, I see it all the time), special cheap or even free housing, free or cheap internet, phones, free or cheap healthcare plans, etc, etc. When you add it all up you can actually come out substantially ahead of someone that makes just a little too much money to qualify for jack shat.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. If you actually know what you're doing and you have multiple kids, you can rake in a lot of welfare. That's not even counting illegal methods of abusing the system. But why not? It's almost impossible to get caught if you know what you're going, unless you just turn yourself in with documented evidence.

Basically what we call "poor" today is nothing like true poverty. Ask an old person that grew up poor and whose family had to grow their own crops just to have enough food to eat what they think about free phones, free internet, free housing, and EBT. Pretty amazing. What it all amounts to is they convince everyone they're doing it to save the poor, when really they just keep them dependent.
 


Yes but you are speaking of a very small minority of people who abuse the system. When people complain "omg poor people get free internet now!", there isn't millions of people sitting home living off the government getting free stuff. I hope you guys realize most people in the US are working low paying jobs. If you have a nice job and can afford internet, heathcare, food, utilities, clothing, etc thats great! Most people don't have that luxury, the people who would qualify for something like this has to pay taxes too you know...
 

dstarr3

Distinguished
LoL, are you jealous of poor people? You could always switch to a minimum wage part-time job where you don't make enough to afford food and rent. There are options here.

You laugh but in many areas (especially those with a moderate-to-high cost of living), making 20-35k a year (depending on household size) actually disadvantages you vs. making LESS money and getting access to a PILE of poverty benefits. Including but not limited to EBT (which isn't limited to bread and juice, by the way, shrimp, steaks, I see it all the time), special cheap or even free housing, free or cheap internet, phones, free or cheap healthcare plans, etc, etc. When you add it all up you can actually come out substantially ahead of someone that makes just a little too much money to qualify for jack shat.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. If you actually know what you're doing and you have multiple kids, you can rake in a lot of welfare. That's not even counting illegal methods of abusing the system. But why not? It's almost impossible to get caught if you know what you're going, unless you just turn yourself in with documented evidence.

Basically what we call "poor" today is nothing like true poverty. Ask an old person that grew up poor and whose family had to grow their own crops just to have enough food to eat what they think about free phones, free internet, free housing, and EBT. Pretty amazing. What it all amounts to is they convince everyone they're doing it to save the poor, when really they just keep them dependent.

There are a minority of people that abuse free speech, the privilege to drive a car, or to drink, etc. So, yeah, let's just disallow anybody from doing those things ever. Because a small percentage of people are abusing these things means these things are of no benefit to anybody anywhere.
 

hoofhearted

Distinguished
Apr 9, 2004
1,020
0
19,280
Great. That means that those of us with a lower income jobs who have to actually pay for internet are going to get slower speeds than the Lifeline people. It makes more sense to not work.
 

larkspur

Distinguished


Wait. What number is a scare tactic meant for the uninformed? You mean the $20 trillion of federal debt? It's actually $19.2 trillion and it makes a huge difference in the quality of life of Americans. You should actually inform yourself. Here let me help:

In 2008 the national debt was ~$10 trillion or $91,751 per taxpayer. Today the national debt is $19.2 trillion or $159,693 per taxpayer. So we've almost doubled the national debt in the last 8 years. Debt-to-GDP is a whopping 101%. We haven't seen it that high since WWII. This year the Federal government will spend $300 billion on interest payments to service the debt. $300 BILLION goes down the drain. $300 BILLION that we could use to feed and house the poor, subsidize education, repair infrastructure, lay fiber, or whatever we want (including having a balanced budget and not making the problem worse). That's more than the Federal government spends on education and food stamps (SNAP) COMBINED!!! $300 billion on interest payments gets us nothing and only serves to make the rich richer.

What's even more scary is when you follow the White House's budget projections. For the next 10 years President Obama projects we will continue to have deficits every year increasing from $438 billion in FY2017 to $793 billion in FY2026. His projections further indicate that the Federal government will spend $390 billion on interest payments on the debt in FY2018 and $638 billion on defense. I include the defense budget to give you an idea of scale.
2019: $473 billion on interest and $666 billion on defense.
2020: $547 billion on interest and $683 billion on defense. See a pattern yet?
Skip to 2023: According to Mr. Obama's own budget projections this will be the first year that interest payments will exceed defense spending with $729 billion spent on interest and $719 billion on defense.
Skip to 2026 where $901 billion spent in interest with $771 spent on defense.

If you are able to swallow those numbers without worry then you are just like the Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers who have ignored the rising debt and just kicked the can down the road. The Baby Boomers actually have nothing to worry about - they have enjoyed the benefits of deficit spending but won't be around long enough to experience the real pain of paying for it. This is despicable because it is their children and their grandchildren (many not even born yet) that will pay for their lavish abuse of the government's fiscal power. In 10 years our interest payments will triple (more if interest rates rise higher than expected). The smarter millenials already realize this and their displeasure is manifested in their strong support of anti-establishment political candidates. This displeasure will only increase as more of them realize that they and their children are the ones who will pay for their parents' and grandparents' irresponsibility.

Sources: http://usdebtclock.org/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2017/assets/tables.pdf
 

senshu

Distinguished
Aug 19, 2010
52
0
18,630


I know, right? That number thrown around by itself is typically a scare tactic meant for the uninformed. My cousin is still running power lines to places in the U.S. that have never had it before. More water testing proves many areas across the U.S. have unacceptable levels of lead in their drinking water. I really think we're just touching the tip of the iceberg on that issue.

The only conceivable reason to suggest the poor shouldn't have access to broadband is to keep them uninformed and unable to share their experiences with the rest of the world.

Implying that access to broadband results in people being better informed. That's rich. If anything, it's just the opposite.
 
We're talking about raising the Lifeline budget up to $2.25 billion/yr. That's 0.0001125 of the rounded up $20 trillion debt. In this context, raising concern about our debt absolutely is nothing more than a scare tactic.
 

alextheblue

Distinguished
Yes but you are speaking of a very small minority of people who abuse the system. When people complain "omg poor people get free internet now!", there isn't millions of people sitting home living off the government getting free stuff. I hope you guys realize most people in the US are working low paying jobs. If you have a nice job and can afford internet, heathcare, food, utilities, clothing, etc thats great! Most people don't have that luxury, the people who would qualify for something like this has to pay taxes too you know...

You must have skimmed my post too quickly and only picked up on the abuse section. NOT counting minority cases of illegal abuse, you are STILL better off staying around the government's poverty line (which goes UP as you have more family members/kids) and qualifying for lots of federal, state, and local assistance. I personally know people who get food stamps (EBT cards actually, it's just like swiping a credit card) who have a more comfortable lifestye and own more expensive vehicles than I do. The myriad of assistance programs actually put them ahead of me, despite my slightly higher income.

Go to benefits.gov - you can search by your state and also by federal agency. There's tons of Federal and State programs... behold all the programs out there. That doesn't even count local food banks etc. At the federal level the HUD housing program is of particular interest.

I live in the US and I've seen more sides of it than than are willing to see. Did you know that if your income is lower, you pay less (or even zero) income taxes? If you have more children you get more money when you file taxes and qualify for other benefits? It would actually benefit me financially to get a part time job and seek section 8 housing and other aid. The only incentive for me to keep working full time 5.5 days a week is future opportunities. But many people are content to work the minimum they have to, and instead rake in cash from tax dollars. Who can blame them, it's financially incentivized. You think this is false, but you don't actually know the numbers!

Roughly 1/3 of Americans live in a family that receives means-tested government assistance. Actually it's probably higher now since Obamacare is also means-tested and expands assistance above and beyond Medicaid's reach. That is a LOT of people. Not a small percentage. That doesn't even count age-based programs like Social Security (which is a mandatory Ponzi scheme) or Medicare, which by now probably drives the total amount over 50%.

Educate yourself. In another 20-30 years the whole thing will start collapsing inward if we do not change course. There's no one big enough to bail out our whole nation.
 

alextheblue

Distinguished
Oh and for the record I'm not actually against reduced-cost broadband internet for poor families. But if you're that poor, arguing about speeds is kind of silly. In worse times, I was happy with cheap DSL. It beat the crap out of nothing.
 

JohnC5

Commendable
Apr 3, 2016
2
0
1,510
Educate yourself. In another 20-30 years the whole thing will start collapsing inward if we do not change course. There's no one big enough to bail out our whole nation.

We will never get to that point. At some point people will wake up and realize all that free stuff and subsidies are there so the rich can employ slaves and get richer. When slavery is truly eliminated, tax revenues will go up significantly as wages rise. As wages rise there becomes less need for all the free stuff.

We just have to wait for the 70+ million Americans who are currently slaves to realize that they are actually slaves and then things will change quite fast. People just need to get over thinking slavery only occurs when people are not paid a wage. What's the difference between not being paid and being paid a tiny wage that you are unable to live on and have to be dependent on the government to get by.
 

rfunes

Distinguished
Aug 29, 2007
20
0
18,510
If the government was out of the market in the first place, we wouldn't have this monopoly. Government agencies are good to protect the big players by creating restrictive regulamentation and taxation designed to keep smaller and more agile competitors out. So, instead of using taxpayer money to do "feel-good" policies, what about just end this madness and let the market to be free from these agencies in the first place, and let true competition drive prices so low that there is no need to subsidized internet?
 

FITCamaro

Distinguished
Feb 28, 2006
700
0
18,990
Meanwhile we "can't afford" adequate care for veterans and the military is at catastrophically low readiness levels for any kind of major conflict.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.