FCC to Propose $1.7B Subsidized Internet Access for the Poor

tetris42 said:
Wrong, there are plenty of people poor because they made bad decisions, but most people are poor because THEY WERE BORN POOR and they don't have the opportunities to get out of it. In the USA, the economic class you were born into determines where you'll end up more than any other factor. If you want more social mobility so that you birth doesn't determine your fate so much, you have to go to places like Northern Europe.

"Getting into the middle class not being that hard" just SCREAMS ignorance, like you're lived in a bubble existence most of your life. It's like you have no idea what kind of advantages you've had in order to make a statement like that.
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http://richhabits.net/20-learned-habits-that-will-make-your-child-rich-or-poor/
 
tetris42 said:
Well assuming that's even true (I mean according to the article it's 17,000 households that have had water cut off), for something as basic as WATER, "most" isn't good enough. EVERYONE should have access to clean water in a developed society. That's the part where I just don't see how the private sector solves that. Private companies aren't interested in making sure EVERYONE gets a minimum standard of living, they're interested in making profit. People who can't afford their services are irrelevant to them.
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Everyone does have access to clean water, they just can't afford to have a company pipe it to their faucets. If they went down water they can collect it from rain water, river, etc and boil it with wood they grabbed from the trip there.

Everyone has a right to water, they don't have a right to force a company (or taxpayers) to pay for the infrastructure to run it to their house for free + cost of services just because liberals think they do.

There is no possible way democrats can have everything they want. It's literally impossible mathematically. Having Bernie Sanders gain as much internet attention as he has makes me shake my head.

As if his policies are somehow going to do wonders for everyone knowing we have 60+ trillion in unfunded liabilities.
 
going from poor to middle class is uber fucking easy in America. I learned how to do it by watching my own family and then NOT doing what they do. The biggest issue I saw in my peers was simply an unwillingness to look at absolutely everything in financial terms.

Examples: Everyone around me was doing weed or worse except me. This isn't some anti weed thing. Its a cost and that's why you don't do it. Just like i didn't drink till i could afford it. I didn't buy a car till i could afford a used car outright by literally eating 2 meals of PB&J for 2 years straight, i would usually get something healthier on the 3rd meal if i ate one. That is how i saved up the money for my car. This is all while making between 20 and 24k. After that i decided i was going to go to college. I used the hope scholarship (everyone in Georgia with a b average can go to state college for free). I fucked that up though and didn't actually do college (didn't goto class etc.) so i dropped out. So at that point i realized despite everything i had done i did not have enough discipline. So what does a young lad do without discipline? Joined the military. Did that, got GI Bill, wen't to college again for no additional cost to me, now i do pretty well making a six figure income. I fucked up once during that story. Is it fair that i had to do all that? well i think it is, but i've come to realize most people just want no responsibility what so ever.

And to someones point about being in America you have no idea what poor is: YOU ARE SO RIGHT. no-body in the US is poor. If you make 34,000 a year you are the top 1% of income earners on the world scale. You just won't understand it till you have truly seen poor. Truly seen people starving to death, no electricity, no running water(not even the option). I sit here today and understand what my grandfather meant when he said we are turning into a nation of pussies. If i had my way there would ONLY be things to help you move up and NOTHING to help you stay where you are at when it comes to assistance. Most the people who actually bitch about everything we need to do to help people in my personal experience have fallen into one of two categories: they have never been poor and never lived in a shitty neighborhood OR they want everything for free and want to do what they want to do instead of what a business needs you to do. If that's the case fine, start a small business be your own boss. But good luck because you will get taxed to fucking death.
 
Romale23 said:
going from poor to middle class is uber fucking easy in America. I learned how to do it by watching my own family and then NOT doing what they do. The biggest issue I saw in my peers was simply an unwillingness to look at absolutely everything in financial terms.

Examples: Everyone around me was doing weed or worse except me. This isn't some anti weed thing. Its a cost and that's why you don't do it. Just like i didn't drink till i could afford it. I didn't buy a car till i could afford a used car outright by literally eating 2 meals of PB&J for 2 years straight, i would usually get something healthier on the 3rd meal if i ate one. That is how i saved up the money for my car. This is all while making between 20 and 24k. After that i decided i was going to go to college. I used the hope scholarship (everyone in Georgia with a b average can go to state college for free). I fucked that up though and didn't actually do college (didn't goto class etc.) so i dropped out. So at that point i realized despite everything i had done i did not have enough discipline. So what does a young lad do without discipline? Joined the military. Did that, got GI Bill, wen't to college again for no additional cost to me, now i do pretty well making a six figure income. I fucked up once during that story. Is it fair that i had to do all that? well i think it is, but i've come to realize most people just want no responsibility what so ever.

And to someones point about being in America you have no idea what poor is: YOU ARE SO RIGHT. no-body in the US is poor. If you make 34,000 a year you are the top 1% of income earners on the world scale. You just won't understand it till you have truly seen poor. Truly seen people starving to death, no electricity, no running water(not even the option). I sit here today and understand what my grandfather meant when he said we are turning into a nation of pussies. If i had my way there would ONLY be things to help you move up and NOTHING to help you stay where you are at when it comes to assistance. Most the people who actually bitch about everything we need to do to help people in my personal experience have fallen into one of two categories: they have never been poor and never lived in a shitty neighborhood OR they want everything for free and want to do what they want to do instead of what a business needs you to do. If that's the case fine, start a small business be your own boss. But good luck because you will get taxed to fucking death.
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If a very poor black male who dropped out of HS followed Dave Ramsey's advice or followed the example in my link above they would be in the middle class within 5-10 years.

Even working at McDonalds and never getting a promotion. Based on savings not income obviously, but the point stands.
 
Romale23 said:
going from poor to middle class is uber fucking easy in America. I learned how to do it by watching my own family and then NOT doing what they do. The biggest issue I saw in my peers was simply an unwillingness to look at absolutely everything in financial terms.

Examples: Everyone around me was doing weed or worse except me. This isn't some anti weed thing. Its a cost and that's why you don't do it. Just like i didn't drink till i could afford it. I didn't buy a car till i could afford a used car outright by literally eating 2 meals of PB&J for 2 years straight, i would usually get something healthier on the 3rd meal if i ate one. That is how i saved up the money for my car. This is all while making between 20 and 24k. After that i decided i was going to go to college. I used the hope scholarship (everyone in Georgia with a b average can go to state college for free). I fucked that up though and didn't actually do college (didn't goto class etc.) so i dropped out. So at that point i realized despite everything i had done i did not have enough discipline. So what does a young lad do without discipline? Joined the military. Did that, got GI Bill, wen't to college again for no additional cost to me, now i do pretty well making a six figure income. I fucked up once during that story. Is it fair that i had to do all that? well i think it is, but i've come to realize most people just want no responsibility what so ever.

And to someones point about being in America you have no idea what poor is: YOU ARE SO RIGHT. no-body in the US is poor. If you make 34,000 a year you are the top 1% of income earners on the world scale. You just won't understand it till you have truly seen poor. Truly seen people starving to death, no electricity, no running water(not even the option). I sit here today and understand what my grandfather meant when he said we are turning into a nation of pussies. If i had my way there would ONLY be things to help you move up and NOTHING to help you stay where you are at when it comes to assistance. Most the people who actually bitch about everything we need to do to help people in my personal experience have fallen into one of two categories: they have never been poor and never lived in a shitty neighborhood OR they want everything for free and want to do what they want to do instead of what a business needs you to do. If that's the case fine, start a small business be your own boss. But good luck because you will get taxed to fucking death.
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One thing I have to say: If you're earning 34,000 a year, that means you're earning over half of all working Americans. I'm talking about the people working full-time earning 15,000 a year. Before taxes, that's coming out to around $1000 a month for disposable income. That's absolutely doable IF you have other factors working for you. If you don't, the line between making it v. being out on the street is very thin. The path out of poverty is absolutely achievable if nothing serious goes wrong.

At 34k I can live like a king. At 20k I'm still pretty damn comfortable. Once you start getting lower than that, so many factors come into play. What rent is in the region, if you have medical expenses, insurance costs, if you have to support older family members, etc. If the only place you can afford to live is someplace where the rent is so low, a break-in is practically guaranteed, that severely limits options for getting out of it. It's not very smart to assume that just because someone with good health who has a full stomach each night and maybe an hour or two each day to devote towards education or a different career as someone who's eating out of the garbage.

But there's low income, like above, then there's POOR poor. As for starving people, our concentration isn't nearly as high as places like India or Africa, true, but it's still regional. Sections of Detroit, Flint, Baltimore, you bet your ass there are people without electricity, water, heating, and some starving. Some pockets of USA are literally 3rd world poverty levels. Take a look at these pictures if you want to see how awesome some of the poor have it in the USA. A lot of Americans act like these people don't exist and just aren't working hard enough. If you can say that about the people in those photos, then sure, keep up the "poor have it easy" rhetoric.
 
next-Jin said:
Everyone does have access to clean water, they just can't afford to have a company pipe it to their faucets. If they went down water they can collect it from rain water, river, etc and boil it with wood they grabbed from the trip there.

Everyone has a right to water, they don't have a right to force a company (or taxpayers) to pay for the infrastructure to run it to their house for free + cost of services just because liberals think they do.
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That's kind of an outdated pioneer mentality. Sure, there are places you can still do that, but it's technically unfeasible for people to operate that way on a large scale. Water is largely polluted in places like Detroit, you can't just boil it and everything's fine. It's closer to non-existent in many areas in the Southwest. I agree that forcing a private company to pump water for free to individual houses isn't a right. However if you have sections of the population unable to get access to water, then it's totally justified forcing a tax paid government company to pump clean water to a place where people can access it, if not their homes.

I'm surprised you see people having basic access to water as a liberal v. conservative thing. So for the record, are you saying that liberals think everyone should have access to clean water and conservatives say only if they can pay for it? That would clear up a lot for me. Traditionally, I think conservatives didn't exactly think that way.
 
tetris42 said:
That's kind of an outdated pioneer mentality. Sure, there are places you can still do that, but it's technically unfeasible for people to operate that way on a large scale. Water is largely polluted in places like Detroit, you can't just boil it and everything's fine. It's closer to non-existent in many areas in the Southwest. I agree that forcing a private company to pump water for free to individual houses isn't a right. However if you have sections of the population unable to get access to water, then it's totally justified forcing a tax paid government company to pump clean water to a place where people can access it, if not their homes.

I'm surprised you see people having basic access to water as a liberal v. conservative thing. So for the record, are you saying that liberals think everyone should have access to clean water and conservatives say only if they can pay for it? That would clear up a lot for me. Traditionally, I think conservatives didn't exactly think that way.
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I'm a libertarian so I basically take all the sane things from both parties.

What's to stop people from collecting rain water using tools a private company could build for under 30 bucks? Oh yea it's against the law or is so heavily regulated that it forces people out of the opportunity.

The same principle also applies to something like trade skills or even very small businesses were regulations force people out (or prevent them from going after those skills).

Those are outside the topic and more for the SoapBox but the idea that the very very poor are hopeless for eternity is absolutely wrong. Even with taxes, racism, white privileges, or whatever other factors people say prevent them from succeeding it's absolutely possible even when working the lowest paid jobs in the country.
 
next-Jin said:
I'm a libertarian so I basically take all the sane things from both parties.

What's to stop people from collecting rain water using tools a private company could build for under 30 bucks? Oh yea it's against the law or is so heavily regulated that it forces people out of the opportunity.
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In the SW? If you live in AZ, you're probably get less than 15" of rain per year (most of it likely coming during the monsoon season).


Even with taxes, racism, white privileges, or whatever other factors people say prevent them from succeeding it's absolutely possible even when working the lowest paid jobs in the country.
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It's possible tonight you'll discover a practical solution for point to point teleportation, but it's not very probable. Most people born to poor families never move up. Most born to wealthy families stay wealthy.

That said, I'm glad you did well with your government subsidized education. At least you're OK with some forms of socialism.
 
nilepez said:
In the SW? If you live in AZ, you're probably get less than 15" of rain per year (most of it likely coming during the monsoon season).

It's possible tonight you'll discover a practical solution for point to point teleportation, but it's not very probable. Most people born to poor families never move up. Most bornto wealthy families stay wealthy.

That said, I'm glad you did well with your government subsidized education. At least you're OK with some forms of socialism.
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I quit HS in 9th grade was raised in a trailer park, my house hold income is about 180k a year. The reason poor people stay poor is because they are completely ignorant with money and investments.

Education in this country was undoubtedly better when the divorce rate, single parent families, the department of education didn't exist and debt were drastically lower in the past.

Again, if someone quits HS and works at McDonalds at age 16 by the time they are in their mid twenties they could be in the middle class. I don't hate poor people and I know it's a large problem but being poor in America is still better than 80% of the world.

The issue is not with government unless the government wants to start a heavy emphasis on how to manage money towards the end of HS and leverage savings as opposed to spending and going into debt.
 
next-Jin said:
I quit HS in 9th grade was raised in a trailer park, my house hold income is about 180k a year. The reason poor people stay poor is because they are completely ignorant with money and investments.

Education in this country was undoubtedly better when the divorce rate, single parent families, the department of education didn't exist and debt were drastically lower in the past.

Again, if someone quits HS and works at McDonalds at age 16 by the time they are in their mid twenties they could be in the middle class. I don't hate poor people and I know it's a large problem but being poor in America is still better than 80% of the world.

The issue is not with government unless the government wants to start a heavy emphasis on how to manage money towards the end of HS and leverage savings as opposed to spending and going into debt.
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I didn't say nobody that's poor can rise up, simply that the vast majority do not. If I'd been from a poor family, I wouldn't be where I am today. Maybe I would have gone to college, but probably not. Virtually everyone I've worked with over the years, regardless of sex or race or country of origin, came from the middle class or higher. There are exceptions, but they're exceptions.
 
The market provides water to customers.

Areas that are hard to get water to should have justifiably higher water prices.
Rather than subsidizing people who choose to live in the desert.

Government regulation may help keep water clean, but it also serves to subsidize farmers over people.

We grow rice in the desert. Water without any form of corporate subsidy would mean no sane for-profit company would do that.
 
nilepez said:
I didn't say nobody that's poor can rise up, simply that the vast majority do not. If I'd been from a poor family, I wouldn't be where I am today. Maybe I would have gone to college, but probably not. Virtually everyone I've worked with over the years, regardless of sex or race or country of origin, came from the middle class or higher. There are exceptions, but they're exceptions.
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I know, you're not getting disagreement from me on that. The difference is I know why they stay poor. Government taking other people's money and giving it to them through a variety of ways doesn't solve the underlying problem for those people.

Giving people better internet won't solve anything either, it just gives them even more thinking its a right.
 
next-Jin said:
I know, you're not getting disagreement from me on that. The difference is I know why they stay poor. Government taking other people's money and giving it to them through a variety of ways doesn't solve the underlying problem for those people.

Giving people better internet won't solve anything either, it just gives them even more thinking its a right.
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That's where you misinterpret what's actually going on here.

It isn't about giving them _better_ internet, it's about giving them access to the internet in the first place.

Not every town has a library or a community center that has computers for people to use. And the time difference between being able to check the computer again later in the week can mean the difference in being able to respond to a job interview appointment in time.

And why should someone be limited to public centers when it comes to necessary things like applying for jobs? Browsing online, see a job offer that was posted within the minute you saw it and apply right then at home... or... Wait 2 or 3 days later before you're able to see the job listing in some library somewhere when the position will have already been interview for by then?

But it's easy to scapesgoat poor people with a broad brush. One would think people who have come from that background would have more perspective, but I guess not...
 
techrat said:
That's where you misinterpret what's actually going on here.

It isn't about giving them _better_ internet, it's about giving them access to the internet in the first place.

Not every town has a library or a community center that has computers for people to use. And the time difference between being able to check the computer again later in the week can mean the difference in being able to respond to a job interview appointment in time.

And why should someone be limited to public centers when it comes to necessary things like applying for jobs? Browsing online, see a job offer that was posted within the minute you saw it and apply right then at home... or... Wait 2 or 3 days later before you're able to see the job listing in some library somewhere when the position will have already been interview for by then?

But it's easy to scapesgoat poor people with a broad brush. One would think people who have come from that background would have more perspective, but I guess not...
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If they can't afford internet, which can be incredibly cheap for the purposes you're talking about, how are they going to afford a device to connect to said internets?

Sounds to me like after this is passed we'll need another one giving computers to all the poor too...
 
wealth is luck AND work, not just work. as long as you believe the hard work fallacy (that you alone are responsible for everything you have) you will be useless to other human beings, and contributing nothing

and as long as you post on the internet that internet access is optional, your contribution to internet access discussion is also non-existent

these people live in a bubble constructed of their own hard delusion
 
next-Jin said:
I quit HS in 9th grade was raised in a trailer park, my house hold income is about 180k a year. The reason poor people stay poor is because they are completely ignorant with money and investments.
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You're an exception to the rule. Your salary is higher than 93% of Americans, so clearly 93% of Americans are ignorant with money and investments? Quantitative review after quantitative review shows that economic mobility is lower in the US than in all other OECD countries and that it is decreasing nearly every year.

And to claim that Standard Oil, DeBeers, US Steel, etc, were only monopolies based on government intervention is so naive. Hell, go back to Genghis Khan...

Even Adam Smith wrote back in the 1700s that whenever businessmen met, they conspired to form monopolies and raise prices to consumers.
 
chockomonkey said:
If they can't afford internet, which can be incredibly cheap for the purposes you're talking about, how are they going to afford a device to connect to said internets?

Sounds to me like after this is passed we'll need another one giving computers to all the poor too...
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Ever been a situation where you literally had to choose between food or the gas money to drive yourself home?

There exist people in a situation where internet access is a luxury they simply cannot afford.
 
DocSavage said:
How can you say that with a straight face? If you've ever played the game Monopoly, you'll realise that there's always just one winner who ends up controlling everything. How can any other smaller company compete when the bigger company can just take losses and undercut the smaller company in every market the smaller company services?
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the fact that government regulation creates hurdles to smaller players in the market is not controversial. It is well established economic reality.

Monopoly, as a board game, is in no way shape or form a model for an economy. If you think this, then you should spend less time posting about economic issues, and more time learning the fundamentals.
 
techrat said:
Ever been a situation where you literally had to choose between food or the gas money to drive yourself home?

There exist people in a situation where internet access is a luxury they simply cannot afford.
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Or you have 7 kids and can't afford $3,000 bail, so your 16 year old kid stays in jail for 3 years, without ever going to court, then kills himself after spending 2 years of that in solitary confinement after being abused by guards and inmates?
 
TwistedAegis said:
Or you have 7 kids and can't afford $3,000 bail, so your 16 year old kid stays in jail for 3 years, without ever going to court, then kills himself after spending 2 years of that in solitary confinement after being abused by guards and inmates?
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in fascist america, the law breaks YOU
 
techrat said:
Ever been a situation where you literally had to choose between food or the gas money to drive yourself home?

There exist people in a situation where internet access is a luxury they simply cannot afford.
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Nope!

My parents took special care to teach me how to navigate the world. I've been pretty poor at one point right after moving out, but was still able to feed myself and have internet.

People always seem to discount the affect of good parenting.

And yea i know shit happens.. shit should happen to me any moment which would cause me to be dirt poor... but I've always been pretty damn lucky. I've always wondered when/if it'll run out.

But anyway... If i was in the position of choosing between food or gas, then I probably wouldn't care about having internet cause I would have already sold any devices which could connect to the internet for food/gas money.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Or you have 7 kids and can't afford $3,000 bail, so your 16 year old kid stays in jail for 3 years, without ever going to court, then kills himself after spending 2 years of that in solitary confinement after being abused by guards and inmates?
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All the more reason to abolish prisons. The concept of incarceration is archaic, outdated, and belongs in the Victorian era, not in the present.

Justice should be restorative and rehabilitative, not retributive.
 
This needs to go even further. Our internet infrastructure is piss poor. There are still areas that can't even get broadband internet or the internet that is available is terrible. The prices are ridiculous for the product provided. We pay about $50 for a 3mbps DSL line. More often then not we get speeds less than 0.5mbps. The ISPs are overselling the product and not delivering. Consumers have no recourse whatsoever because there isn't even another ISP to compete.

It's absolute bullshit. We get ripped off and can do nothing about it.

So yea, subsidize the poor and expand infrastructure please.
 
I tend to believe that many in public office are just lazy, greedy incompetent people who are looking to live large of the public dole and are too lazy to make it in the private sector.

Everything, and I mean everything the federal government runs fails horribly and at a tremendous burden to the taxpayers.
 
sliverjazz said:
I tend to believe that many in public office are just lazy, greedy incompetent people who are looking to live large of the public dole and are too lazy to make it in the private sector.

Everything, and I mean everything the federal government runs fails horribly and at a tremendous burden to the taxpayers.
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Yep. Such massive failures such as the interstate system, the internet, NASA couldn't even put someone on the moon fer christ's sake!
 
TwistedAegis said:
And to claim that Standard Oil, DeBeers, US Steel, etc, were only monopolies based on government intervention is so naive. Hell, go back to Genghis Khan...
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Standard Oil and US Steel were never monopolies, and DeBeers is a government-backed cartel.

Did you mean to shoot yourself in the foot?
 
TwistedAegis said:
Or you have 7 kids and can't afford $3,000 bail, so your 16 year old kid stays in jail for 3 years, without ever going to court, then kills himself after spending 2 years of that in solitary confinement after being abused by guards and inmates?
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Sounds like a problem of GOVERNMENT to me.
 
techrat said:
Yep. Such massive failures such as the interstate system, the internet, NASA couldn't even put someone on the moon fer christ's sake!
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But it can get hacked to fuck such that pretty much every detail about every federal worker is known from the hack.
 
sfsuphysics said:
True no taxes are used... instead they're fees that are assessed to everyone else who has a phone.
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As long as you don't call it a tax.

Its not a tax.

So.

Just like, you didn't say the N word, cause you didn't say the N word, you said N word.

Duh.

Fucking christ our society has truly adopted doublespeak and doublethink.
 
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