Obama's Goal: 98% of US Covered By 4G 324
alphadogg writes "Ninety-eight percent of US residents would have access to high-speed mobile broadband service within five years under a plan that President Barack Obama detailed Thursday. Obama's proposal, which he alluded to in his State of the Union speech last month, would free up 500MHz of wireless spectrum over a decade by offering to share spectrum auction proceeds with current spectrum holders, including television stations, that have unused airwaves. The cost of the proposal is likely to raise questions from lawmakers, and some backers of government broadband spending have already raised concerns that the plan would give money and spectrum to large mobile carriers."
Let's not let broadband history repeat itself... (Score:5, Insightful)
So I have to wonder if this will be very similar to the wired broadband initiatives done years ago which have only started to provide benefits to the people many years later and at a much higher cost than our tax dollars should have required?
And what is '4G'? Is this wireless broadband definition going to be rooted in 2011 or will it be an ever increasing amount which will be viable in 2025 or 2050?
The spectrum is owned by the PEOPLE Mr. President, not you, not the government, and certainly not those you license it to. If they are not performing up to the very flexible definition I am sure you won't create because it wouldn't be at all advantageous to the wireless carriers, can we remove that license from them immediately?
Yeah, I didn't think so. Let's rethink this before you do something insanely stupid and let 'broadband' history repeat itself.
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What's a Bieber?
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My god you're right! [tumblr.com]
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I suspect the *real* strings of this plan will be revealed in the fine print--where license terms will require carriers to police "IP infringement," agree to the Obama's kill switch [techworld.com], and allow the NSA and FBI free reign to monitor individual users.
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Good. You begin to suspect the presence of the man behind the curtain. Clever boy.
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I dont think so, I think it's also part of a bigger plan, that they have. They want to be able to access all people, no matter what the communication style, cell phone radio, tv, etc....the president needs to be able to address all of his people, not some....
I think this also has a bigger means of allowing access to the military that want to be able to have access to all that is electronic in terms of communication....so if you have a cell, they want you to use something that they can track easily, it's usu
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I believe those "4G" are meant to denote the 4th generation network; and not actual 4G the standard since it's not been finalized/implemented yet. That's why like every carrier has a 4G network, but use different technologies; there is no standard for them to actually adhere to.
3G and CDMA are actual standards and for a carrier to use that title it has to adhere to those standards and use certain technologies.
4G at this time is just a marketing term meant to capitalize on the fact that everyone was touting
4G is 1Gbit/s (stationary) (Score:2)
Re:Let's not let broadband history repeat itself.. (Score:5, Informative)
More people need to read Atlas Shrugged.
No. No no no. No no no no no no no. Nononononononononononononnonononono.
Ayn Rand was a decent novelist, and a travesty of an economist and philosopher.
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Ayn Rand was a decent novelist...
Uh, no. Her characters are wooden simulacra of people, her dialog is stilted, and her plots non-existant-to-laughable. Even she said that her main point in writing her novels was to put forth her philosophy. It shows. Her writing is good only to the extent that ones knowledge of literature starts at "Sci" and ends at "Fi" - and not very good SciFi at that. She doesn't even make it to the level of a good pulp writer...
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There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
Mobile... what about wired? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Because building a wired infrastructure is a lot more expensive unless somebody creates a viable, cost effective network over power cables.
Not to mention that you don't even need a permanent home to have mobile broadband.
98% (Score:5, Insightful)
Coverage for 98% of the US is different than coverage for 98% of Americans.
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I'm not sure what your point its. Unless we try very hard to do things in the most illogical way possible, covering 98% of the land mass would almost certainly mean that at any given time *more* than 98% of the population would have coverage. It would probably mean that *most* people would have 100% of the time.
What I'm concerned is what terms the coverage would come under. How expensive would it be? What about net neutrality? Would this be a subsidy for carriers who want to lock subscribers into their
You pay twice for it (Score:5, Insightful)
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- The government pays a company to build the 4G stations. With your tax money.
- The government owns the 4G stations and lease them for a fixed price to anyone willing to play.
- End user profits because you can have a true free market where you can choose your provider.
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Well, you could have stopped there.
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First let me state a couple things.
1. I have been a pretty big fan of Obama, voted for him, and think mayb e things he is doing are on the right track.
2. I have worked for a telephone company and also a very big cable company.
I would not have issues at with things like this if I felt like the consumer saw any of the benifits. Better internet connections for americans is a good thing, but for some reason the government has given money to these companies with no strings attached, and this has been done more t
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That's like complaining that you have to pay money to buy a car, and also pay for the gas to put in it. You are paying for 2 different things.
No, he's not. If you're comparing it to a car and gas, that would be the internet (car) and content (gas). The phone company doesn't pay for content. They don't create anything useful. They just control the means to access anything useful. So, as per the OP comment, it is like paying the phone company to build a car, then paying the phone company to actually use the car.
Taxpayer money to build out Big Business Backbone (Score:2)
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Is anyone else angered at the prospect of using US taxpayer monies to build out a backbone to be given to, and then resold to us by the big carriers at rates that the rest of the world finds laughable?
No. But then I'm not American.
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Well, seeing as I work on the chips that go into the base stations, at least I and my coworkers benefit from this. And then there's all the people actually installing and maintaining the towers, etc. Not all of the money gets used like this. [spatula-city.org]
Of course, I haven't seen a good argument for what the economic benefits of widely deployed broadband might be. Sure, everyone can now stream YouTube videos at higher definition. But in terms of basic economic benefit, even if you have fairly slow (by today's standa
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Hmmm... the new Slashdot theme eats italics. Does it eat bold? It looks like it lets bold through. I had meant to emphasize "broadband" in this statement:
Basically, the gist of my thought is that, yes, broadband is nice and shiny, but what great innovation are we enabling by bathing the vast plains of Wyoming and Nebraska and Montana with it? I can see the argument that more and more basic serv
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I don't know what the advantages of near universal high-speed access would be, specifically, but I can certainly say that it doesn't seem unlikely that there would be some emergent behavior going on where unexpected benefits can crop up.
The main reason I'm in favor of spending money on something like this is because I think that increasing access and convenience to vast amounts of information can be transformative.
From my own experience, the shift from dial-up to an always-on DSL connection years ago was ac
"4G" OR "Wireless broadband" (Score:2)
Is this the same 98% (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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... all people want to do is throw out snarky comments instead of getting into the trenches and restructuring things
Well, the reason why this happens is because everyone knows that, if things were restructured, with the influence that business has in the corridors of power these days, we'd all end up with air and water like they have in China. So, no, I'd prefer not to restructure. And, if snarky comments keep that from happening, then snark on...
profits (Score:2)
...some backers of government broadband spending have already raised concerns that the plan would give money and spectrum to large mobile carriers
Someone hasn't been paying attention very well over the past decade or so. Giving money to the large mobile carriers is likely the entire the point.
It's each individuals RIGHT...... (Score:2)
It's each individuals RIGHT to pay higher taxes so we can have $100+ bills every month from corporations! Glad to see everyone else gets it too!
But will it have a kill switch? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you have been following Egypt even a little bit then you should be worried about any U.S. plan to implement an internet kill switch. So the question is: who is going to administer this nationwide 4G and will it have a kill switch built into it? Will there be market competition in the form of multiple carriers or will you only be able to get it in one place and therefore be subject to whatever useless rules they come up with? Law enforcement can already triangulate your cellphone's position with little effort.
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And the government is an expert in layer 1: bullets, tanks and handcuffs are a
Is this the same 4G that is going to kill GPS func (Score:2)
Coverage != Usefulness (Score:2)
Most of Chicago is covered with 3G. I currently use AT&T but have tested devices from other mobile carriers as well. Coverage isn't the biggest issue. It's the fact that when you do have 3G, so do more than 1 million other people. They've oversold and underprovisioned their network in dense population areas, which means that while I've got a full signal, I can't really do anything with it since there's no bandwidth left at the tower. If there's only a T1 going to the cell tower, and 100 people are
With schools no longer having text books (Score:4, Interesting)
Even further in defunded-government fantasy... (Score:3)
The UK is looking at massive library closings due to right-wing ideology on how to close their budget shortfall:
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/10/133656983/britain-faces-closing-the-book-on-libraries [npr.org]
Plus, it's also been seen here in the states with the big budget shortfalls in municipalities:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6618984.html [libraryjournal.com]
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/04/10/trustees_vote_yes_on_library_closings/ [boston.com]
So in the end, we'll have no text books, no libraries, and you'll
Unicorns and Magic Fairy Dust (Score:2, Funny)
I want to feed and cloth 98% of Americans and I will use Magic Fairy Dust and the sale of Unicorns to pay for it. Logistics...Aint it a b!tch?
Yet it won't be used. (Score:3)
And then, 94% of the US won't use it because they will face large overage charges if they use over 3 Kilobytes per month.
Sell off the spectrum; why not Yellowstone too? (Score:2)
Just wait for the conservative re-hash (Score:3)
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Does that mean if there's a power outage people's rights are being violated by the power company?
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Does that mean if there's a power outage people's rights are being violated by the power company?
Yes, yes it does. Which means that the person who has lost internet access should be able to sue the person who swerved to avoid a cow in the road and hit the utility pole that was carrying the lines that provide the power. Also, good health is a human right, and you can't be healthy without food, which is why the constitution involves itself in the important enumerated government power of forcing once citizen to provide food for other citizens. And 4G service, of course. And a nice house.
Re:More Bread & Circuses (Score:5, Insightful)
You've got the wrong Roman reference, actually. Communications access is economic infrastructure, like roads and aqueducts. Economic infrastructure pays for itself and increases the wealth of the nation.
Re:More Bread & Circuses (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that every time an initiative is launched to modernize the country and bring us up to speed with the other countries that have far surpassed the US, people cry foul? Why do they never do that when, oh I don't know, a WAR is about to be launched on a country that has nothing to do with anything?
Yes, these things cost money. And yes, that money is probably going to come from the people who pay taxes. But as far as subsidized plans go, this is a good one. This will actually help people. Not like subsidies for oil companies to drill up our oil and then sell it back to us at a massive profit. Or subsidies to private armies to fight our wars for us without those nasty checks and balances. Or subsidies to Israel that go straight into their oppression efforts.
I can totally get your reluctance to pay for things like this but it just strikes me as rather awful that we can spend THAT much money on right-wing causes and nothing on good initiatives like this.
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I am actually surprised, too, that a site like this would be full of people who are so against this. Is this a tech site or Fox News forums?
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I am actually surprised, too, that a site like this would be full of people who are so against this. Is this a tech site or Fox News forums?
I'm sure most everyone here would like to see ubiquitous high-speed wireless internet access for everyone. What some of us don't want is ubiquitous high-speed wireless internet access that's given to some people at a cost to other people. Others may be concerned about government control over the network. Now that it's ubiquitous and government controlled, little 10 year old Johnny who just got his new iPod touch can look at porn whenever he wants, and the government can't have that, because the children are
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/. has been taking more and more of a swerve to the right as, i'm guessing, its readers age and get bogged down in middle-management.
That's odd, because I was just thinking that /. has been taking more and more of a swerve to the left over the last decade. So much so that I don't bother to read it much anymore.
Either way, the idea that the most important thing the US government could be doing right now is paying people to install new cellphone towers so more people can watch youtube on their phone is ludicrous. It's the same old Keynsian nonsense which has brought the economy to the mess it's currently in.
Re:More Bread & Circuses (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it bears Obama's name. They would complain about a new war, if Obama was the one starting it. They also complain about everything Obama does with the wars he inherited.
That said, plenty of people rallied, physically not just blogwise, to oppose the invasion of Iraq. The news media barely covered it. Shamefully I wasn't one of them, but I don't think their efforts should be forgotten.
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I don't mind increases in spending to do these things. I want the government to legalize these things being done by local governments who can do a much better job of cutting waste and providing us we need without subsidizing large businesses and union leaders in the process.
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Great for middle-class employed people
Why? To the extent that the government makes anything happen in this regard, that's exactly who gets to pay for it (well, their grandhildren do, actually). What does this have to do with unemployed people, other than the indirect prospect of it involving a few more jobs?
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Poor people can't afford the ~$600/year of upgrading from Free TV (which will largely turned off) to cellular 4G internet.
They might be able to afford $15/month DSL which is what the Obama admin should be pursuing, especially since the copper wires are already there.
Re:Great for middle-class employed people. (Score:4, Informative)
>>>5-7% of it.
Well I googled it. POTS copper line leads into 95% of Alaskan homes, mainly due to FDR's universal service fund subsidizing the lines. In other words - you were waaaaay off.
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But at what cost?
I've read the FCC's plan, and it would all-but-kill the Free TV that poor, unemployed, and ~50 million other americans currently rely upon (i.e. the FCC would sell-off the remaining channels). In exchange these people will be offered 4G internet plans that most cannot afford, and which cannot replace the television they lost, because of 5 GB caps.
From free to ~$600 a year. Not the kind of offer I would expect from a Democrat.
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But at what cost?
I've read the FCC's plan, and it would all-but-kill the Free TV that poor, unemployed, and ~50 million other americans currently rely upon (i.e. the FCC would sell-off the remaining channels). In exchange these people will be offered 4G internet plans that most cannot afford, and which cannot replace the television they lost, because of 5 GB caps.
From free to ~$600 a year. Not the kind of offer I would expect from a Democrat.
You think that a $600/year plan would cover the cost of watching TV online? If it is really "4G", and if I still have access to the websites where I watch TV, then I think I would blow through a cap in about a day!
However, with net neutrality not applying to wireless networks...maybe I wouldn't...
Re:Great for middle-class employed people. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not necessarily true. Unless you are at the very bottom of society you still have a phone. For people in these areas they can replace their landlines with smartphones that also provide them with internet access they wouldn't otherwise have. The overall cost to have a smartphone vs having a landline, internet access and a home PC is far less.
Head over to India and go through the country-side. You will see cell towers everywhere and even goatherders with cell phones. Honestly when I was there I had better reception that some places in the suburbs of NY.
Re:Great for middle-class employed people. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're either not familiar with smartphones and the costs associated with internet access (here's a clue - that landline you propose people replace with a smartphone is mucn MUCH cheaper than the wireless data plan) or you are one of the middle-class employed people that doesn't really understand how expensive this stuff actually is, and how unaffordable for the poor. If you do the math, you might find that a landline + an old modem (remember those?) is still more cost effective for internet access. Yeah, you don't get to stream 1080p video over a modem, but the expensive smartphone data plan can barely manage that either. You'd still be able to access essential services, though (if they haven't succumbed to bandwidth-consuming web 2.0 b.s.)
Your experience in India may be relevant, but you probably missed the part where the goatherders weren't being bent over a barrel by domestic telecoms to satisfy "maximizing shareholder value". I bet their costs were a fraction of what they would be in the U.S. In other words, your experience in foreign lands was largely irrelevant to the reality that people have to face in the country that the original post was referring to.
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And that landline and old modem is being connected to what? Any how many job search sites really work that well over dial up?
And it is you who seems to be out of touch with how much it actually does cost to have a landline and even dial up internet access. It's not as cheap as you think.
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And that landline and old modem is being connected to what? Any how many job search sites really work that well over dial up?
More than work over nothing. And moreover, you're not taking into account services like the local library or state-provided services (that's the U.S. version of state, not the generic term for government) that include *free* access to the internet.
And it is you who seems to be out of touch with how much it actually does cost to have a landline and even dial up internet access. It's not as cheap as you think.
Oh? Really? I have a landline. I'm telling you it's much cheaper in the New England region of the U.S. than the cable-provided internet access I also subscribe to, and quite a bit cheaper than my monthly Verizon Droid bill (I have that too).
I'm not out of touch, dude. I get bills for each of these services every single month. I have actual data available to me (spanning years) to make a comparison, not just personal anecdotes. On the basis of cost, a landline plus modem would kick the shit out of the
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This isn't at all about landlines: it's a deal to save Clearwire's butt and make a Sprint-Clearwire deal impossible for T-Mobile to pull off. The administration, beyond its lofty goals, is pretty worried about having the Deutsche Bourse merge with the NYSE, then have about half of the mobile infrastructure also owned by EU interests... IMHO
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Where do you get a phone line for $10 a month? Bare minimum service with no long distance here is $30-35.
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$65/month for a smartphone with unlimited data, unlimited nights and weekends, and free long distance is a fantastic de
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Well, you don't have to have unlimited LD, caller Id, voicemail, etc. Those services are the only way your landline was $60.
I was able to have a land line (measured, I think 25 calls free a month and $0.02 per local call after that) and Elite DSL for $58/mo. I dropped it and went to cable Internet for $55 so I could get 3-4 times the speed (too far from equipment for Uverse. They have it at the other end of my block).
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Even assuming that there's no incentives here forcing the wireless carriers to offer cheaper options (reasonably priced pay as you go data, for instance) in exchange for the new spectrum, let's do some math. I'm making some assumptions here some of which are probably not accurate in every case but seem sensible in the broad sense. You'll only have one smartphone per family (seems reasonable, since people usually only have one phone and computer per family), and there needs to be a way to make the smartphon
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I already read this story.
Well as I said before: This is a bad plan. There's Not enough wireless spectrum to support ~350 million people (plus free TV, radio, et cetera). Maybe if you limited them to 500k each, but that's certainly not a solution.
What we really need is Wired internet to every home.
I also object to the FCC's plan to turn-off free television (i.e. sell off channels 25 and up). I currently enjoy 40+ channels and this plan would drop that number to ~10 channels. I don't feel like being for
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You don't need to support 350 million people on the spectrum. You need to support the number of people in range of any one particular tower. It'll always be a problem in New York City or Chicago, where there's always a ton of people in range of a given tower. In most places the spectrum is more than large enough to support average usage on any one particular tower. Luckily places like Chicago and New York are easier to wire for exactly the reason they're harder to support wirelessly. More population de
Re:Simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it is - just like federal highway administration. There are certain things that just can't be done on the small scale local government level. I am curious what you think the federal government's purpose IS if it isn't to take on national scale projects.
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So where in the constitution does it grant that to the Federal Government?
Federal highways come under "To establish Post Offices and post Roads;" one of the enumerated powers in Article 1, Section 8, for example.
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You do understand that the Constitution was written over 200 years ago, right? Not everything that happens is going to be spelled out word for word there. That's why we still have a legislative branch.
And you can extrapolate from Post Offices and Post roads VERY easily to email and internet access. One's kinda superseded the other.
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You do understand that the constitution was supposed to be an explicit power grant, where powers not granted were not to be available to the government, even the legislative branch? If the government truly needed more powers than those expressly granted, it was supposed to require a constitutional amendment. That's why the constitution provides for amendments.
No wonder the government doesn't really like the idea of strong contract law...
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Actually it is - just like federal highway administration. There are certain things that just can't be done on the small scale local government level. I am curious what you think the federal government's purpose IS if it isn't to take on national scale projects.
I'd say that's pretty well spelled out in Article 1, section 8 of the constitution. It's unfortunate that the general welfare clause and regulating trade among the states clause have been so badly abused. They were never intended to give the federal government unlimited power.
Why? (Score:2)
Why do we even need this?
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Market Value is exactly the problem.
Covering 98% would mean covering an awful lot of territory that doesn't have enough customers to make it worthwhile.
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But how come for the founding fathers didn't remember the internets?!?!
Seriously though, that shows initiative to maintain communications infrastructure. I'm pretty sure they'd be in favor of a government controlled base medium (i.e. open wireless channels) that can be leased and operated by private companies. If another company can come in and offer the same services for less money, then you'll have competition. The current state of affairs is a small group of monopolies (no, not an oligopoly, in my are
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Hmm your point would be relevant if the founders had known what the internet was and decided not to address it. Do to the fact that they did not know, your point means nothing.
Re:Simple answer (Score:5, Funny)
This is not the job or purpose of the federal government.
And I suppose the next thing you're going to say is something crazy like it's also not the federal government's job to use the IRS to sieze your wages because you haven't paid the penalties you've racked up for refusing to buy the insurance that you will now be required to buy so that you can use that to get your constitutionally enshrined human right to services from a podiatrist because your feet hurt from standing in line for your new iPhone.
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Comment ftw! Too bad I used up my blessings dude :)
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No, it is not - the market should decide who needs what coverage, and where. If you made the choice to live in the middle of a 100,000 acre range in Montana, don't bitch about lack of coverage and expect me to pay to make it happen.
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That's a very simplistic view of the situation. I am not sure why people think this only benefits people who choose to live in the middle of nowhere for the fun of it. First, high speed mobile broadband is not available in a lot more areas than just rural Montana. Second, people live far from cities because they just can't afford to live anywhere closer. As I mentioned above, these people probably can't afford a landline, internet access, and a home PC but they probably can afford an internet ready sma
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Second, people live far from cities because they just can't afford to live anywhere closer.
While cost of living is definitely better outside of the cities, a lot of us choose to reside out here for other reasons. Peace, privacy, low pollution, low crime rates, no stupid city ordinances, etc. The only good thing to come from living within a city is convenience.
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Well you are getting into a whole other discussion about government vs anarchy. This is not the place to discuss whether we should have a federal government that taxes its citizens in order to create a military, provide support for the needy, and take on national level projects.
Unless you plan on staging a revolution, though, I guess you'll just have to leave with the way things were started 200+ years ago.
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Dude! I don't use hemorrhoid cream. If you do can I have the $0.0001 my taxes payed to make sure the next tube you buy doesn't give you a bunghole tumor?
Seriously, you think you aren't on the dole with the rest of us? Get real.
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I bet you expect clean water and food in your populated-beyond-self-sufficiency city and would bitch about a lack of it. You chose to live in the city, you should be happy dining on sewer rats and soylent green.
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Agreed, and I DEFINITELY don't want cell phones all over the place in our national parks. People are bad enough in the city, can you imagine taking in a great scene while hiking and here comes someone blabing loudly into their cellphone. No thanks.
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100% of US having no poverty.
Considering that poverty generally seems to be defined as having less than X% of the average income, that's easy: just pass a law requiring that everyone is paid the same amount.
Of course the economy will collapse, but at least no-one will 'have poverty' anymore.
Definition (Score:2)
Considering that poverty generally seems to be defined as having less than X% of the average income, that's easy: just pass a law requiring that everyone is paid the same amount.
Or it could just be defined as earning less than $-1, so even with no income you're still not poor.
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Nope, you'd think that wouldd work, but there are people with massive credit card bills who owe more than they make (I'm not sure how you manage to rack up $100,000 in debt when you make $30,000 a year, but people seem to have done so), so it's entirely possibly to end up with a negative income if you consider debt as actually existing (which a lot of people seem not to).
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define poverty. do you mean "poor" or do you mean "must have at least this much spendable income" or do you mean "must be able to attain this level of food/shelter/goods"? specify.
It's impossible to eliminate "poor" without a method for instantly generating any tangible good one may desire. I.e. star trek replicators. until you reach this point, "poor" is simply a relative value meaning "bottom 10%" or something like that. you will always have a relative spectrum of wealth unless you manage to invent the ut
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You do realize that many people can only afford to live out in the "sticks", right? Living in or even near a big city is very expensive.
And read my post above about why this is more important for the poor and lower middle class than you think.
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Riiight, so everyone ought to move into the cities, driving up housing costs even higher than the already unreasonable rate.
Also, you do realize that agriculture and mining is nearly always done "in the sticks" as you put it. Show me where you can fit a 6,000 acre farm, or even a 60 acre farmette within your average city. Even if there were room, complaints abo
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would about sum this latest boondoggle up. $5B we all pay to bring broadband to the people who chose, knowing the limitations, to live in the sticks? Outside of that, are there any areas that don't have broadband sufficient to watch at least 480p video?
Some of us are living in rural areas for many reasons and that choice sometimes comes with major factors that far outweigh broadband availability. Yes, there are many areas that don't have any broadband access at all. None. I don't think you can fairly consider satellite internet "service" to be broadband. Overpriced and slow with massive latency. You should try viewing even a 320p video over satellite connection sometime - it isn't very pretty.
That said, this sounds like another instance where the gov
Re: (Score:2)
bread and circuses [wikipedia.org]
If you can burn through 13 trillion dollars in two years and end up with higher unemployment, a continued credit crunch, and devaluation of the national currency, what better way is there to seek reelection than to distract the people?