New US Broadband Projects Get $795 Million In Funding 174
snydeq writes "The Obama administration has announced nearly $795 million in grants and loans to 66 new broadband projects across the nation. The subsidies — to be doled out by the US NTIA and the US Rural Utilities Service — will bring broadband service to 685,000 businesses, 900 health-care facilities, and 2,400 schools, according to officials. The NTIA will award $404 million to 29 projects, and the grants will finance 6,000 miles of new fiber-optic lines. Most of the money will finance middle-mile broadband network projects. The RUS will award $390.9 million, with $163 million in loans and the rest in grants. Most of the RUS money is focused on last-mile broadband projects."
So how much of this will the telcos steal? (Score:5, Insightful)
How much of this will end up in the pockets of a telco exec and leave us with nothing to show for it?
You know like every other time we have given these bastards a dime.
Re:So how much of this will the telcos steal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nearly all of it. That is the way the corruptocracy works.
Any penalties for failure to meet goals? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there any penalty for the telcos (such that they have to pay this money back, with penalties) if they fail to meet the goals this time around?
Last time we gave them money we didn't get what we paid for, and they just shrugged their shoulders.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... and I'm tempted to steal a quote from someone else.
"It's Tuesday, get a rope!"
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Well you'd only know that afterwards, so it'd be ex post facto legislation, which we all know is not only unconstitutional (except where it's aimed at limeys) but violates the fifth, eighth and nineteenth laws of thermodynamics. Also, wookies.
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I assume that whole thing was a joke, but you do know its only ex post facto legislation if the legislation is created after the failure, right? The government is capable of writing legislation with performance penalties.
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Re:So how much of this will the telcos steal? (Score:4, Insightful)
You know like every other time we have given these bastards a dime.
Seriously. I'm reminded of a pithy quote about the definition of "insanity."
Re:So how much of this will the telcos steal? (Score:4, Informative)
I really wish people would stop spreading this myth.
It's as bad as those who keep repeating the "Betamax lost because it wouldn't allow porn" myth (holds up copy of Playboy on betamax). If you actually read the 1996 Telecommunications Act the money was allocated for upgrades to fiber -or- upgrades of poor quality telephone lines to 56k -or- upgrades quality (which was considered damn fast compared to the 14k modems most people at the time were using). The 56k upgrade from analog-to-digital telephones is where most companies chose to spend the cash. If you think that was a mistake, well then blame the 1996 Congress who wrote a poor law.
This act was somewhat similar to the "100,000 New Cops" that Clinton used to brag about. It sounds great until you read the actual bill, which allowed the money to be spent on cops -or- cop equivalents (computers, radios, et cetera). Most police departments used the money to buy new gadgets not actual cops.
AS FOR NOW: I was wondering where the money would come from: "In the Recovery Act, Congress allocated $7.2 billion to the NTIA and RUS for broadband grants and loans." In other words this new project was passed over a year ago but its only getting spent during the next few months. I wonder why they waited so long to act?
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For that matter (Score:2)
You can argue in 1996, fixing line quality was the right thing to do. Broadband technologies were still in their infancy, vanishingly few people had them. Most people were on dialup. What would show them the biggest benefit? Fixing the phone lines. That would show an immediate increase, and using a proven technology.
While it is nice to talk up future technologies, you have no idea how that'll pan out.
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In 1996 running voice over fiber was not impossible. Expensive yes, impossible no. It sure looks like it would have given the most benefit, if that is all you optimize for.
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Wow, that's good to know. I guess I'm only imagining that my line speed is still at 26.4k or my friend on a larger nearby road still gets 14.4k. Wonderful upgrade there, Verizon! Glad to know you didn't pocket it and screw me over.
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Man don't be so cynical.
See Article http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/Broadband_Award_Roster.pdf [whitehouse.gov]
The first grant is just for 5.2 million for 60 people and 20 businesses.
At 50$ per person per month and 150$ per business a month that is just a around $72,000 Per year of revenue for the 5.2 million dollars expense.
Who says Democrats don't know how to properly allocate funds. How I missed the boat on this free money has me needing some serious therapy. Do we have free health care for that yet? :)
Copp
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5.2 million for 60 folks?
Tell the fuckers to move.
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Re:So how much of this will the telcos steal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Taxes are how you pay for civilization. It is not stolen money. Grow up or move to Somalia.
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If that were all it was then the money wouldn't have to be taken by force. No, taxes are how other people pay for their civilization with your money. Involuntarily depriving someone else of their rightfully-owned property is theft by any sane definition, regardless of the intended use.
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Re:So how much of this will the telcos steal? (Score:4, Informative)
How much of this will end up in the pockets of a telco exec and leave us with nothing to show for it?
In the US? I have no idea, but in the UK Blair managed to get this to work with the deal he did with BT when he came to power in the 90's. He vastly inflated BT's share price by handing them a virtual monopoly for most of his reign but he did also vastly improve he quality of broadband connection available to people at a lower price who were not in the capital.
Some vary rural areas still suffered but people like myself who lived in run own inner cities where ADSL would never normally have been offered cheaply found we were being offered a service that was comparable to that which was on offer in the capital. This was no mean feat being that at the time I lived in one of the most run down areas of Britain (Moss Side).
I am not saying that his will turn out the same but these projects can if they are planned correctly and if the correct level of control is put in place to stop the sort of profiteering you describe. In the UK situation this was done by guaranteeing BT a virtual monopoly at the end of the subsidised period. They willingly were forced into selling space on their backbone to many other companies for a reasonable rate in return for being treated preferentially in the bidding for several nationwide contracts.
This resulted in many small businesses setting up as BT resellers of ADSL products and being able to compete with BT on price even though they did not have a national backbone like BT. Now they are able to do the same by renting space in BT exchanges for servers and buying routing bandwidth from BT.
Maybe this is only possible when big business and governments can actually work together as they realise it is in both their long term interests. Blair wanted every child to grow up with internet access and BT realised this would give them a shit load of extra customers down the line. Blair new it would help the UK service economy he was trying to build if we were all PC and internet savvy before we entered the job market, even if we were destined for no IT roles that still involved a small element of PC use like writing an email or using excel to figure out if we have any money left to spend.
Re:So how much of this will the telcos steal? (Score:5, Insightful)
,No they promised unlimited but meant 250GB/month.
So add liars to the list.
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,No they promised unlimited but meant 250GB/month.
So add liars to the list.
I'm still not sure how this is dishonest. Have you ever brought a dumptruck to an 'all you can eat' buffet and proceeded to fill the back of it?
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Nope, I normally do not eat with a dumptruck. Unlimited would mean I could soak my connection 24/7. I have never been tossed out of an all you can eat buffet for eating all I could eat.
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But nowhere in the description does it say, 'all you can eat without bringing a dumptruck'.
I think you get my point.
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No, I do not.
A dump truck is not a normal eating utensil.
Unlimited normally does however mean what I thought it would mean. Unlimited would mean you can use it unlimited up to the maximum for the whole period of use, 1 month. 250GB can be reached on my connection in less than 1 month.
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Again, in the buffet scenario you're totally comfortable with 'normal' but in the bandwidth area you're not. This is a classic double standard.
'Unlimited' is a loose word used to mean something similar to 'all you can eat'. You can believe that in one context words must be exact and in others it isn't required, but it simply isn't fair to do so.
In short, 'Limited in such a way that most people will be satisfied' is roughly the same as 'all you can eat in one sitting'.
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I'm finding your argument a bit confusing myself:
Buffet unlimited -> eat all you want with a fork and spoon, we will not stop you no matter how much that is.
Internet unlimited -> download all you want with a computer, we will not stop you no matter how much that is.
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huh, there is no double standard?
All you can eat, is all you can eat there normally. Unlimited does not mean what the other folks normally use, it means as much as you want to use.
Unlimited is not a loose word, it is as tightly defined as all you can eat. Unlimited means without limits, all you can eat means all you can eat at one meal, not all you can take.
You are either a fool or a shill.
Using 100KB/s for a month is not even 10% of my total bandwidth. This would be like if all you can eat meant 10% of wha
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Bringing a dump truck to a restaurant and maxing out a connection are not equal in the metaphorical sense. The key difference is you do not need to do anything out-of-the-norm like buy a server rack in order to do that to a connection.
In short, you'd be right if you had to acquire several thousand dollars worth of equipment to abuse it.
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I've got an analogy for you. That's like using a fucking THIMBLE at a buffet instead of a plate. You're either ignorant or dishon
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Well, maybe, but probably not. Only very specific use-cases would attain those bandwidth caps.
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'All you can eat in one sitting', not 'all you can eat in a lifetime'.
It does take some really specific use-cases to reach the cap. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, to be sure, that they hadn't considered providing that much service to those select people when they wrote up their marketing materials.
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I don't care what they considered, nor do I care that the Chinese buffet probably did not want me eating only crab legs. In both cases I will have the specific use case my little heart desires.
Why would I care what they considered? I am paying for a service, if they don't like my use don't sell it to me. Better yet don't lie about how it can be used.
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Yeah but the Unlimited contract also says they can change the terms whenever they feel like it (such as imposing a 250 GB limit). If you don't like the new terms, cancel the contract.
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Seems more likely those sort of contract terms are unconscionable.
I would prefer they just did not attempt to lie in the first place. You can call it marketing or advertising, but I call it like I see it lying. We can teach little kids not to do it, but not rich assholes for some reason.
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Note that's something they teach in the public schools, for the peons. If you go to private schools for the rich, they teach you from a whole different book of parables.
Re:So how much of this will the telcos steal? (Score:4, Funny)
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Yeah, like the time you gave them $40/month and all you got was an unlimited internet connection, just like they promised? The audacity of those guys!
Has anybody else noticed that a lot of posts on Slashdot are made with absolutely no memory of events more than 4 months old?
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Public funding, private profit? (Score:4, Interesting)
So... $800 million. Alright. How does that compare to profits major telecoms acquired since they got their first boost in the 90s?
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On the plus side, it is expected to "create or save" about 5000 jobs (a mere $160.000) -- Hard to guess how many "bogus" saved jobs are in this accounting.
On the minus side, it is guaranteed to take (theft when not done by the government) the entire income of about 16,000 workers in order to support pay for this.
When are we going to break this cycle of stupidity. And yes, this is probably better than a lot of government spending.
There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad ec
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The US is currently on schedule to default on its debt for the first time in 2026. I would be pretty confident about the cycle of stupidity ending at that point, because we'll be in Greece's situation, and their government has successfully been forced to stop their cycle of stupidity.
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The US is currently on schedule to default on its debt for the first time in 2026. I would be pretty confident about the cycle of stupidity ending at that point, because we'll be in Greece's situation,
Surrounded by dead ocean and living on a piece of land with no remaining natural resources to speak of? I guess I could see the first part.
and their government has successfully been forced to stop their cycle of stupidity.
Who do you envision forcing the USA to stop? We're not members of the EU.
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The thing that is stopping Greece is not the EU, but rather how much worse things would be if the EU didn't bail them out, and the knowledge that without stopping themselves, they wouldn't get bailed out. Rather than ask who will stop us, ask who will bail us out.
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Rather than ask who will stop us, ask who will bail us out.
Greece is inherently fucked if their economy tanks because they have no natural resources worth mentioning. Their country is propped on top of a blob of rock. Once it was an absolutely critical hub of shipping for the civilized world, now it is just another country with a fascinating history that needs to import a lot of food. And coincidentally yet relevantly, we may have a short history here in the USA, but we export a lot of food and are capable of exporting (or mining or otherwise producing for ourselve
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"creating jobs" is easy... Creating productive, long term jobs is the trick.
Hire one guy to make bricks all day. You created a job!
Hire another guy to smash bricks all day. You've created TWO jobs!
Hire another guy to sort the rubble, and prepare it to be recycled by the first guy to make more bricks. You've created THREE GREEN jobs!
Take away the federal money, and all three of them are out of work again, with absolutely nothing to show for all the money spent.
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Perhaps fixing our roads, bridges and other infrastructure might actually be worth something?
STOP SPENDING (Score:2, Insightful)
Great, hundreds of millions more out the door when we are already deeply in the hole as a notion. It's a broadband stimulus package!
You want to help out broadband in the U.S.? Make it illegal for communities to have only single providers of service. That would open the doors to competition and reduce prices for everyone, not just the handful of districts this federal boondoggle will target.
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I'm not a fan of monopolies or anything, however if not for monopolies on "public utilities", then you'd have to have multiple runs of cable (impractical and physically destructive), or companies would have to allow other companies to use their infrastructure but then charge them for it. Seems to me, this would likely limit the incentive for expand infrastructure (the leasing fee for the second provider likely wouldn't make up the difference lost in access charges to the end user, otherwise the second comp
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There isn't really a big problem with multiple physical runs. Some communities do it, and when it happens, it seems to work out really, really well for them.
Worked for me (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a fan of monopolies or anything, however if not for monopolies on "public utilities", then you'd have to have multiple runs of cable (impractical and physically destructive)
Actually it's not that destructive when you are talking last-mile solutions.
As an example, I used to live in a small community that had Comcast cable. We had a small provider come in, Wide Open West, that had fiber to the curb - the last few hundred feet was coax, delivered side by side with the traditional cable and then at my house one cable attachment replaced the other.
The benefit? I got a 100Mb/s internet feed - that was up and down, about 10x faster than Comcast internet and a 20-30x faster uplink. And it was ten years ago...
The practical reality is that you're not going to have a handful of providers running cable or wires to your house, because if there's more than three people competing for service it doesn't make as much economic sense to have a fourth come in since there's already competition lowering prices. And if any of them fold other companies can come along and make use of the infrastructure. It doesn't mean your neighborhood will look like pre-switch NYC with cables clouding the sky...
If you're wondering what happened to WOW, they got bought out and that was the end of THOSE shenanigans, offering cheap fast internet was simply not allowable.
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>>>you'd have to have multiple runs of cable (impractical and physically destructive)
Yeah because a 50-fiber bundle (1 fiber per cable/internet company) really takes up a lot of room. A whole 2 cm in diameter. /end sarcasm. But seriously: The logical course would to have this 50-fiber bundle run under every city street and owned by the government. Then lease 1 fiber to Comcast, 1 to Cox, 1 to Time-Warner, 1 to GoogleTV, and so on. Then, at last, we would have a pro-choice solution for customer
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It would work exactly like this:
No government agency (city, county, state) is allowed to enter into any exclusivity agreement for provenance of communications systems.
Even better, but unrealistic, all existing exclusivity arrangements could be broken.
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The US does not have that power to dictate what local governments can or can not do, but the Member States might have the power.
For example in Maryland the government runs virtually everything so they could easily outlaw cable and telephone monopolies at the local level. Or: They might try what they did with BGE, where BGE maintains ownership of the pipes/wires, but require that customers have choice from multiple sources.
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Congress might be able to argue that any such contract with an operator doing business in multiple states is void. But I'm sure it would go to court.
Congress definitely has the power to hand out those funds only to states with such a law in place.
But in any case, its all a moot argument, nothing is ever going to get better in this area.
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Okay then, try this:
No government agency (city, county, state) who has entered into any exclusivity agreement for provenance of communications systems shall receive Federal funding of any kind.
Better?
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The Supreme Court has already ruled, multiple times, that it's not acceptable to punish states by saying "no" federal funding "of any kind".
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ORLY?
Under which part of the Constitution?
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So make it no federal money for telco stuff or something vaguely related.
Re:STOP SPENDING (Score:5, Interesting)
Simple law
No cable(wire, fiber) plant owner may operate an ISP nor video nor phone service provider or vice versa. All cable plant owners must provide access on a non-discriminatory basis.
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Seems Like New Age Rural Telephone Initiative (Score:2, Interesting)
New Deal 2K10 (Score:2)
The top goal for the grants and loans "is to put Americans back to work immediately, managing projects, digging the trenches, laying fiber-optic cable, and stringing up those utility poles," said Gary Locke, secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the parent agency of the NTIA.
I thought that the New Deal actually worsened the pre-WWII economic situation in retrospect. Not sure why this seems like a good idea now.
Re:New Deal 2K10 (Score:5, Informative)
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Like social security? Yeah.. we all know THAT's going well!
Not to discount a lot of the work they did.. I live within spitting distance of Hoover Dam. There are a lot of lasting works started in, if not completed during the new deal.
It didn't do too terribly much in the short term. And no matter what either side argues, nobody knows whether it would have eventually played out as fixing the economy or tanking it, because WWII came along and put all of us to work. (off-topic, but that fact is partly responsib
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hmm?
It is going quite well, in fact even by the time I retire it is expected to pay out 75% of the amount I should get if we do nothing. If we up the retirement age like we should do, it will be paying out 100%.
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It is working about as well as anything could. Poverty among the elderly has plummeted compared to before it was instituted.
People are living longer and having fewer children. No amount of accounting can change that ultimate fact. Not even a high savings rate among workers for later retirement could magically overcome a lower producer/consumer ratio; that would just result in wage inflation as elderly people with big bank accounts compete for
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I thought that the New Deal actually worsened the pre-WWII economic situation in retrospect. Not sure why this seems like a good idea now.
Yeah right. The tens of thousands of people who would otherwise have starved beg to differ.
Grandparent poster has it right.
"Government stimulus" programs destroy more jobs than they create. So they fed a million people - by starving 3.5 million others? Thanks a lot.
The very programs claimed to combat it turned the latest of a series of short economic downturns into "Th
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FDR was hardly "...one of our greatest Presidents..." by any stretch of the imagination.
In fact, the complete opposite of "greatest", ranked right down there with Carter.
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What was wrong with carter?
He might have been not that great, but no where near as bad as say hoover.
He did not sell out the working man like your hero Reagan?
Re:New Deal 2K10 (Score:4, Insightful)
The real trick is trying to figure out any policy difference between Hoover & FDR. An honest look at history (including several of FDR's advisor) admit the new deal was largely a continuation of the policies started by Hoover. FDR himself said that he would have voted for Hoover had he not gotten the nomination.
I hope... (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope that this will affect us somehow.
I work in Silicon Valley, right by two major freeways (880 and 101... so not far out there) and just a couple miles from Cisco, and the best normal service we have is crappy AT&T DSL at 2Mbps down and 0.4 Mbps up.
Meanwhile, 5 minutes away, at my home, I have a 30Mb down 10Mb up connection.
I would like to be able to VPN into work without it crawling along, or without us having to shell out something expensive for business class service. We don't need guaranteed uptime or anything fancy, just a faster connection for day to day stuff.
There have been times where I've driven home to download a 3GB file because it was faster than waiting for it to happen at work.
I will be thrilled when >10Mbit broadband becomes the standard.
-Taylor
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>>>the best normal service we have is crappy AT&T DSL at 2Mbps down and 0.4 Mbps up.
They don't have faster speeds? My Verizon DSL offers 12 Mbit/s, and it's cheaper than Comcast's equivalent service.
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I've checked before for Comcast Cable and AT&T's Fiber service. Neither are available here.
Double-checking on DSL options; for residential they offer "Up to 6Mbps down, 768Kbps up" for $24.99, but for business the best they offer is:
"For bandwidth-intensive applications
Downstream Speed: Up to 3.0 Mbps
Upstream Speed: Up to 512 Kbps"
And it's $40 a month. That must be what we have, and it's a f'ing joke.
I've lived in 3 places in the area in the last couple years and I had fiber or cable at 10Mbps, 24Mbps,
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So get a bunch of those plans and a decent router.
Or pay for business service.
Jobs (Score:2)
And if the chorus of idiots will realize that this is the best and quickest way of creating jobs, maybe the American economy would have a chance if they could just shut up for 10 minutes.
Our WWII spending brought us to 120% of GDP for our national debt, but it only worked out in the end because it gave all sectors of the economy a living wage, practically creating the middle class. (That and Patriotism back in those days included paying taxes and buying War Bonds.) Double points if those jobs improve Americ
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You think spending 5.2 million to get 60 Alaskans Internet access is worth it?
It might be cheaper to relocate them.
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Well, they cost far less than 60 soldiers deployed in Afghanistan. And they'll have internet access for the rest of their lives instead of just a year.
Assuming you're not just full of shit, which you probably are.
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Afghanistan is a pointless war I agree, lets save some money by ending that too, Iraq as well. I still fail to see what that has to do with this current waste of money.
For $86k per head we might just be able to give them totally free satellite Internet for life.
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The point being you have to focus on beating your crack addiction before you think about paying down your credit cards.
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You're not adjusting for inflation and compounding over 20 years, nor the investment deduction (the government can make at least 5% apr over 20 years making home loans if nothing else).
So now they need to pay more like $40,000 over twenty years to make this pay off, so they need an increase of at least $8000/year in earnings.
Doubtful.
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>>>Our WWII spending brought us to 120% of GDP for our national debt,
Yes and when WW2 was over (1945), the Depression snapped right back and people were jobless again. The stock market and GDP did not return to 1928 levels until the early 1950s. So basically all the spending for WW2 cured nothing.
Also there's nothing productive about a war, which is basically equivalent to building a bunch of products and then blowing them up. A war is *destructive* not productive. It wastes resources and money
Cue the facts! (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, assertions are my favorite. It makes arguments so easy to win.
Yes and when WW2 was over (1945), the Depression snapped right back and people were jobless again.
No, unemployment rates stayed low and and GDP did not drop. So the real question is, are you purposefully ignorant or just being a troll?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us_unemployment_rates_1950_2005.png [wikipedia.org]
http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=230 [data360.org]
Also there's nothing productive about a war, which is basically equivalent to building a bunch of products and then blowing them up. A war is *destructive* not productive. It wastes resources and money and labor hours. It's the Glazier Paradox - smashing windows just to make work. It would be wiser not to smash the windows in the first place.
War is enormously profitable for the winning country, especially when you get to control precious resources as a result. The Glazier Paradox does not apply - we were smashing millions of dollars of weapons into things we didn't repair with our own money. WWII involved a lot of nation building, and our workers provided the manufacturing for most of the planet since Europe and Japan were in pieces. (Not that I agree this is the way to come out of the recession, but it is important to remember history amid your vague rhetoric involving paradoxes.)
Similarly throwing a bunch of money at fiber installs, without considering whether the market will use them, or whether they will just sit unused (dark fiber) is about the same as building a bunch of bridges that lead to nowhere (don't connect to roads). That too is a waste.
Mass transit and communications infrastructure are investments in the future. Even if it there's a bit of waste here and there, it beats giving it to the financial industry, who do nothing useful for the economy at large.
This is the purpose of government. Keep the economic machine running by ignoring the rules when they stop working. Keep income equality high so there's meritocracy instead of aristocracy. Enforce policies to make sure that the economy is well educated and capable of performing complex functions to yield good results for investment.
The relative power of federal, state, and local governments is something that can be argued, but the larger point still remains.
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Honestly, assertions are my favorite. It makes arguments so easy to win.
Especially when you provide citations that avoid the period that the grandparent specifically identified. Did you hope no one would notice?
No, unemployment rates stayed low and and GDP did not drop.
Your unemployment rate graph starts at 1950, several years after the war ended. So, it doesn't show the increase in unemployment rate immediately afterward.
Try this one instead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Unemployment_1890-2009.gif [wikipedia.org]
It was indeed still low immediately after WW2, especially by today's standards. But, it did increase -- it doubled from
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Especially when you provide citations that avoid the period that the grandparent specifically identified. Did you hope no one would notice?
No, I didn't notice myself. I knew the employment rate stayed around or below 6% after WWII ended, which is supported by the link you provided. Keep in mind the current employment rate is much higher than the quoted 10%. They do not count the underemployed or the people who have given up looking for work anymore.
However, it does directly refuse your contention that GDP didn't drop: from 1945 to 1946, GDP dropped from 2.0 trillion to 1.7 trillion (in 2005 dollars). It didn't recover to to 2.0 trillion (in 2005 dollars) until 1950.
This is a fair point, but I think pretty meaningless in context.
Are you trying to state that WWII did not reduce employment or increase GDP, or that the Depression returned after the war was ended?
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P.S.
>>>If the continued destruction of the middle class isn't ended
It's the growing national debt (from 10.5 trillion to 13 trillion just since Bush left office) that will destroy the middle class. That's the equivalent of $130,000 owed by each American home. This nonstop spending is causing us to self-destruct (like Greece).
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We've got nowhere near the Greece level of debt problems, at least not in the near term. None of the actions of the global market show any signs of worry bout US debt, they're more than happy to lend the government money. National debt reduction right now should not be a priority for the US right now, the federal government's debt is not the cause of our current economic problems.
But if you really want to complain about the debt, a huge chunk of our current deficit has to do with a foolish administration st
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Under Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" (2001-2007) the proportion of taxes paid by the richest 10% increased from 67% to 72%, while
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The top 1% of earners pay 40.42% of all taxes collected yet earn only 22.83% of the money.
The top ten taxpayers in the US in the year 2000 paid taxes on only 50% of their income. I would assume this to be status quo in the absence of any other evidence.
Under Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" (2001-2007) the proportion of taxes paid by the richest 10% increased from 67% to 72%, while the proportion paid by the lowest 50% of earners went from 3.91% to 2.89%.
That can be easily explained if the poor made less taxable income, which they did, because they're making less money period. Unemployment has increased throughout that entire period. The number of jobs has remained fairly constant but less of the jobs are full-time.
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Yeah, in truth the part that needs to be fixed is that 1% earning 22% of the money. That is utterly crazy, and taxes is the only way we've found to stamp on that behavior so far, but it clearly doesn't go far enough.
Intellectual prostitution must pay pretty well... (Score:5, Informative)
Nicely cherry picked data. I like how you conveniently left out that the top 10% have seen their income rise from $172,000 in 1980 to $339,000 in 2005 - that's a nice doubling of their income. The top 1% did even better - from $517,000 in 1980 to $1,558,000 in 2005. That seems like pretty good economic progress.
And how did the middle class do? From $51,000 to $58,000. Lower Class? $34,000 to $37,000. Lowest Class? $15,700 to $15,900.
So we know why the top 10% are paying all the taxes: they make all the money. And they pay lower tax rates! From 37% for the Top 1% to 31%, the top 5% from 31.8% to 28.9%.
http://www.econdataus.com/efftax05.html [econdataus.com]
Red Queen's Race. (Score:2)
I like how you conveniently left out that the top 10% have seen their income rise from $172,000 in 1980 to $339,000 in 2005 - that's a nice doubling of their income.
Did you use nominal dollars or something corrected for inflation?
Given that the value of money as measured by the consumer price index (and a number of other measures) dropped by more than half in that time (DESPITE advances in manufacturing technology that SHOULD have made stuff CHEAPER) your numbers suggest that even the despised rich ended so
Never mind. (Score:2)
Oops. I see that source DID use constant dollars. So it says what you claimed.
= = = =
I note, however, that it does not address the real point of the original statistic: That essentially half the electorate pays no taxes. That's the tipping point for the classic collapse of a democracy or republic: When the majority votes for ever more goodies stolen from the producing classes, who then throw in the towel and stop producing.
Fixed (Score:2, Insightful)
Comcast, Cox, Verizon, AT&T Execs Get $795 Million In Funding.
Fixed your headline free of charge.
great (Score:2)