Is the economy really improving?

[ZRod]

For starters we went from high speed internet to wifi...

[cm husker]

For starters we went from high speed internet to wifi...

Ok, replace the colloquial "wifi" with HSI.

 

The arguments are the same. I haven't seen anyone on this thread argue convincingly that this pet project is worth the investment more than another project that would require subsidies.

 

Unless the contention is that we should pay for everyone to have everything, choices have to be made. My contention is that those choices should be made by consumers through demand signals.

 

If the contention is that certain consumers don't have enough money (productive chips), then lets redistribute productivity directly through minimum income rather through "public good spending projects."

 

That way, if rural people want ISP, they can use their minimum income to buy the goods and services. My guess is most will choose something else, though. And that's ok. Actually, that's good.

[huskerfan2000]

never mind, no need for this post.

[huskerfan2000]

 

I believe engaging in conversation with you involves multiple goalpost moves, irrational contentions, unsupported and largely comical opinions and in general is a waste of time. I apologize to anyone who's read this. I know better.

Your engagement has been to consistently repeat a conclusion: we should pay for rural people to have wifi and then throw in some personal attacks. You have no explanation for why we should pay for wifi for rural people other than "they deserve it because they make food." You have no explanation for how such a system of handouts would be checked or should apply to other pet projects.

 

Where have I moved the goal posts? What has been my irrational contention? My opinions in this are supported - happy to send you links. They also aren't comical - if they were, you'd be able to refute them on the merits instead of resorting to personal attacks.

 

 

 

From what I have read you are not moving the goal posts, some just can't handle others disagreeing with them.

[huskerfan2000]

For starters we went from high speed internet to wifi...

 

That isn't moving the goal posts.. just different forms of delivery.

[ZRod]

It's not "rural people' it's The People. The point has already been made and you want to argue semantics.

 

Electricty, High speed internet, clean water, paved roads. They're for the common good! Is a rural hospital supposed to go without those things and let patients die because they don't have an ekg, Xray, clean drinking water, or good road to transport the patient to a specialty center? Like wise in this age of rapid information transfer and databases being online; are they supposed to let someone suffer from a curable issue because they need to flip through their book which may or may not have the latest information about the ailment? Similar points can be made for farmers, teachers, grain storage facilities, police officers, fire departments, ranchers, veterinarians, power plants... the list goes on and on.

 

This is common sense. It's not about picking winners and losers, it's about the genral welfare.

[ZRod]

 

For starters we went from high speed internet to wifi...

 

That isn't moving the goal posts.. just different forms of delivery.

That was tongue in cheek. I knew what he meant, but it was low hanging fruit. Knap already pointed out one instance of the movement before. But if we're going to argue semantics we better keep arguing them...

[Landlord]

 

 

As the Internet becomes a more integral part of daily life, people with shoddy connections are at an economic disadvantage. Fast Internet is necessary to take video-based online classes and to sign up for health care. (Imagine the horror of trying to navigate Healthcare.gov with dial-up.) Rural hospitals use it to video-conference with urban medical specialists, and schoolteachers increasingly record lectures that students can watch at home.

But Lawrence Wood, associate professor of media arts and studies at Ohio University, says the most significant drawbacks are cultural. "The main reason people use broadband these days is for entertainment," he says. Having a smartphone or a fast Internet connection "is really a matter of being a part of contemporary life in the United States."

Expecting the private sector alone to fill the broadband availability gap is unrealistic. So a number of rural areas have turned to community-owned networks. Powell, Wyo., built its own fiber-optic network, which a local Internet provider pays to use, and many of Washington state's public utility districts are doing the same, some with help from the 2009 stimulus. On the Navajo Nation, where fewer than 4 percent of residents have broadband access, the tribal utility recently received a $32 million federal grant to bring wireless service to the entire reservation. And in southeastern Colorado, a rural electrical co-op provides broadband in places like Two Buttes, population 43 – doing for Internet what it did for electricity in the 1930s.

But simply having access isn't enough; people have to actually use it. Broadband adoption rates are 13 percent lower in rural America than in cities, Strover found, with non-users citing high cost and the belief that they don't need to be online. But when rural residents use broadband, there are economic benefits. In a 2013 study, Strover found that rural counties where over 60 percent of people used broadband had more rapid income growth and slower unemployment growth than similar counties with fewer people online.

https://www.hcn.org/issues/46.2/rural-americans-have-inferior-internet-access

[cm husker]

It's not "rural people' it's The People. The point has already been made and you want to argue semantics.

 

Electricty, High speed internet, clean water, paved roads. They're for the common good! Is a rural hospital supposed to go without those things and let patients die because they don't have an ekg, Xray, clean drinking water, or good road to transport the patient to a specialty center? Like wise in this age of rapid information transfer and databases being online; are they supposed to let someone suffer from a curable issue because they need to flip through their book which may or may not have the latest information about the ailment? Similar points can be made for farmers, teachers, grain storage facilities, police officers, fire departments, ranchers, veterinarians, power plants... the list goes on and on.

 

This is common sense. It's not about picking winners and losers, it's about the genral welfare.

 

 

What else should we add to this list of projects for the common good? You raise a great issue when you bring up rural hospitals. Should every rural hospital have top of the line cancer and burn units? If not, why not? Wouldn't something like that be for the "common good"? Heck, it'd even provide jobs to doctors and nurses and janitors and hospital admins. Why not just expand every rural hospital to be full service like an LA or NY hospital?

 

You see, I actually agree, the list of "general welfare" can go on and on and on - and it will as long as special interests are there to convince people that it's only "fair" and for the "common good."

 

Question is, who is going to pay for it? What will be sacrificed in place of it?

 

Because what "common good" advocates don't realize or admit is that the dollars taken from people for use on "common good" pet projects mean that those people lose out on things good for them. It's simply a form of corporate welfare (because who do you think makes bank on these types of projects) and 9 of 10 times it results in a massive transfer of wealth from the less wealthy to the more wealthy.

[cm husker]

 

As the Internet becomes a more integral part of daily life, people with shoddy connections are at an economic disadvantage. Fast Internet is necessary to take video-based online classes and to sign up for health care. (Imagine the horror of trying to navigate Healthcare.gov with dial-up.) Rural hospitals use it to video-conference with urban medical specialists, and schoolteachers increasingly record lectures that students can watch at home.

But Lawrence Wood, associate professor of media arts and studies at Ohio University, says the most significant drawbacks are cultural. "The main reason people use broadband these days is for entertainment," he says. Having a smartphone or a fast Internet connection "is really a matter of being a part of contemporary life in the United States."

Expecting the private sector alone to fill the broadband availability gap is unrealistic. So a number of rural areas have turned to community-owned networks. Powell, Wyo., built its own fiber-optic network, which a local Internet provider pays to use, and many of Washington state's public utility districts are doing the same, some with help from the 2009 stimulus. On the Navajo Nation, where fewer than 4 percent of residents have broadband access, the tribal utility recently received a $32 million federal grant to bring wireless service to the entire reservation. And in southeastern Colorado, a rural electrical co-op provides broadband in places like Two Buttes, population 43 – doing for Internet what it did for electricity in the 1930s.

But simply having access isn't enough; people have to actually use it. Broadband adoption rates are 13 percent lower in rural America than in cities, Strover found, with non-users citing high cost and the belief that they don't need to be online. But when rural residents use broadband, there are economic benefits. In a 2013 study, Strover found that rural counties where over 60 percent of people used broadband had more rapid income growth and slower unemployment growth than similar counties with fewer people online.

https://www.hcn.org/issues/46.2/rural-americans-have-inferior-internet-access

 

 

 

The bolded is not meaningful or particularly relevant. Of course places with HSI have better growth. But it's not clear that (a) it's because of HSI that there's better growth - it could be the opposite - better growth led to consumers who were able to buy broadband, and (b) whether the Return on Investment would be worth the cost of building out a broadband system all over the country, even in communities that have been shrinking for 50 years.

 

p.s. I have much less problem with a community purchasing a community-owned network - I just don't expect a laborer in Omaha to pay for a broadband project in the panhandle. Or in the case of the example in your paragraph, I don't expect US citizens in FL to buy broadband for rural reservations and other communities.

 

For those who do advocate for gov provided broodband, what is the line? Why don't you agree with government provided cars? Or gov. provided healthcare? Or gov provided vacations? These are undeniably all things that make society more productive. How do you pick and choose the winning projects?

[BigRedBuster]

 

This entire conversation is so idiotic I'm surprised it's being had.

Actually, it's pretty fundamental to how gov should run, what it should pay for and why.

No it's not. You completely ignore the macro benefit to the entire country.

[cm husker]

 

 

This entire conversation is so idiotic I'm surprised it's being had.

Actually, it's pretty fundamental to how gov should run, what it should pay for and why.

No it's not. You completely ignore the macro benefit to the entire country.

 

 

I've not ignored it at all.

 

Where is the data? Where is it researched and reasoned that spending $10,000,000 on rural broadband gets the most bang for the buck? Maybe more productivity would come from giving $10,000,000 to Omaha public schools? Or maybe just giving a $2,000 check to each of Holdrege's residents to do with what they think is best would be more productive? What if that means the farmers there can develop a more efficient way to do XYZ and therefore improve things?

 

Everyone who ever advanced a pork barrel line item has argued that their project had a "macro benefit for the entire country."

[BigRedBuster]

So....you are saying kids in omaha are more important than kids in Cozad, valentine or Mccook.

 

They are worth the investment but not western Nebraska kids.

 

Jobs in western Nebraska aren't as important either.

 

The interstate system was put in place as much God military transportation than civilian.

 

States like New York have to get goods to California. How do they do that without the interstate or rail road?

 

The question is fine but the answer should be obvious for someone opening their eyes.

[84HuskerLaw]

I believe engaging in conversation with you involves multiple goalpost moves, irrational contentions, unsupported and largely comical opinions and in general is a waste of time. I apologize to anyone who's read this. I know better.

This is exactly the problem with trying to discuss or debate basic ideas and notions with liberals. They don't listen and refuse to accept the facts which are plain to see if one would simply open one's mind to them.

[Landlord]

Thank god that only liberals do that and the rest of the country is rational, unbiased and doesn't see through any type of cultural or ideological lens