| reply to Transmaster
Re: The Holy one will provide said by Transmaster:Not to worry His Holyness Obama the first will magically provide broadband to all   Well at least he'll be giving something back to the rural people who the Government is stealing tax dollars from to subsidize urban areas. (Referring specifically to abbot districts in NJ) |
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| said by fifty nine:said by Transmaster:Not to worry His Holyness Obama the first will magically provide broadband to all Well at least he'll be giving something back to the rural people who the Government is stealing tax dollars from to subsidize urban areas. (Referring specifically to abbot districts in NJ) that's interesting. i wonder who is subsidizing your water, electricity, gas, and the crops that you grow. couldn't be urban areas, could it? |
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 neowulf
join:2000-10-20
Port Orange, FL | I love people who think rural means they are farmers. I have a property in rural West Virgina, sure there is farm land up there but most people in the area are not farmers. As for the water up there, there is no city water, it is all wells. Electricity is the same price per 1 kWh as my home in Daytona Beach, Fl. There is no gas, you can have propane brought in but there is no cost break on that, in fact there is a delivery fee. If you do grow crops or have farmland you do get a farm tax credit on your real estate taxes. But then if farmers had no incentive to make their land farmland in the first place there would be none of those crops that I am sure you take part in eating.
But for the people who think all rural people make it their choice to live out in the sticks I don't think that is true for all of them. Some simply can not afford to move or their job simply does not exist in a urban area.
It does not bother me much that there is not even phone services there, but I also don't live there full time. But I don't get what peoples problem is that rural areas want broadband access, and if they say they want it they are told to just move. |
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| said by neowulf:It does not bother me much that there is not even phone services there, but I also don't live there full time. But I don't get what peoples problem is that rural areas want broadband access, and if they say they want it they are told to just move. No one has a problem with you wanting broadband access, the problem comes when you expect the rest of us to pay for it. If you want broadband access, pay for it yourselves. Don't expect the rest of us to pay for it in the form of subsidies and higher taxes, and don't expect the Verizon's and the AT&T's to pay for it because its clearly not cost effective for them to do so. They aren't charities. The Cable/Telco's would be happy to provide you with broadband service if you paid for the lines to be strung to your house, if you don't want to pay for it, quit whining about it. |
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| reply to neowulf
said by neowulf:Electricity is the same price per 1 kWh as my home in Daytona Beach, Fl. Another thing... this statement is exactly what I'm talking about. Why do you think electricity costs the same price per kWh as your home in Daytona Beach? Do you really think it costs the same to bring that electricity out to that ranch in the sticks as it does to bring it to a house in a neighborhood that has 400 other homes? Its being subsidized. The transmission lines for the ranch were subsidized and the electricity is being subsidized... |
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iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
 ·Comcast
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Correction: the cable/telcos are unwilling to provide said service AT ALL to rural customers. I don't want subsidies, just buildout requirements and loans to make those buildout requirements real. Problem is, lobbyists...dang lobbyists...convincing the government that eeryone who wants bradband has it... |
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That's easy and the answer is no one.
Electricity is provided by a member owned cooperative.
Water? No one but me subsidizes my water well. Compare that to big city water reservoirs that are located in rural townships and are accessible by roads and guarded by police paid for by rural taxpayers.
No gas lines here either, except big gas lines feeding big cities. See my point above about roads and security and other infrastructure. My gas is delivered by truck to a tank in my back yard. At the price I pay its damn well not subsidized.
As far as crops go, go ahead and import all of your food from China and pray that you don't die of lead poisoning. Furthermore, most subsidies go to big corporate farmers, not the small family farms. In other words, you're supporting ADM, not my neighbors. |
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neowulf
join:2000-10-20
Port Orange, FL | reply to the_ticket
Not one single person I have ever talked to out in a "rural" area asked anyone to pay for their services. Most are hard work people who just don't have access to any such services at all.
Most are true republicans and don't think there should be any subsidies at all. There are more subsidies in urban areas then rural areas, people in projects have access to broadband so are you telling me people in the projects should be cut off from broadband because they take part in subsidies?
Subsidies has no part in the reason there is no broadband in rural areas, as the poster above said it is the Telco's and cable companies who have lobbyist telling Washington that everyone in the US has access to broadband, while it is simply not true. I do not consider satellite as a reasonable alternative, and I think any one who has actually used satellite internet would agree.
If Verizon told me it would cost 10k to run a line to my rural address, and I lived their full time and wanted Broadband bad enough, I would have no problem with that. But that option does not exist, and I am sure not telling any one to pay for any of my services.
See this is the problem, people have it in their head that if a company has to put in services for others they will have to pay more "taxes" this simply is not true and you are just making up nonsense about you having to pay for rural peoples services. |
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neowulf
join:2000-10-20
Port Orange, FL | reply to fifty nine
You said that much better then myself thanks.
That is pretty much exactly how it is on my 110 acres in West Virgina. We also do not take part in the farm credit as we use it for hunting. The Electricity is provided by a member owned cooperative, which was also how I got my power down in the Florida Keys. Back in the days the Florida Keys were considered rural also and had no broadband, since I have left the keys seems like there is broadband down there now, and I doubt it has anything to do with subsidies.
Pretty much small family owned farms do not see any of the subsidies this guy is talking about. The most I hear the average farmer gets is a farm tax credit on the land that is used to farm on their real estate taxes. They still pay normal taxes on their homes. That is why there is less and less small farms every year.
Not only would you have to worry about bad food from China. The cost of food would also increase more then any subsidies are taking away from you from taxes.
But then again subsidies have nothing to do with broadband in the first place... |
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| reply to neowulf
said by neowulf:Not one single person I have ever talked to out in a "rural" area asked anyone to pay for their services. Most are hard work people who just don't have access to any such services at all... ...See this is the problem, people have it in their head that if a company has to put in services for others they will have to pay more "taxes" this simply is not true and you are just making up nonsense about you having to pay for rural peoples services. If this is simply not true, how is the broadband in the rural area going to get paid for? If a company is REQUIRED to build out to rural areas, the money has to come from somewhere, whether the build out is subsidized by the gov't, whether they have to raise prices for everyone else, or whether it comes from something like the USF. Either way, most of that money is coming from everybody else's pockets. IT IS JUST NOT COST EFFECTIVE TO SERVICE BROADBAND TO MOST RURAL AREAS, I don't know what part of that concept people don't understand. |
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1 edit | reply to the_ticket
said by the_ticket :
No one has a problem with you wanting broadband access, the problem comes when you expect the rest of us to pay for it. If you want broadband access, pay for it yourselves. Don't expect the rest of us to pay for it in the form of subsidies and higher taxes, and don't expect the Verizon's and the AT&T's to pay for it because its clearly not cost effective for them to do so. They aren't charities. The Cable/Telco's would be happy to provide you with broadband service if you paid for the lines to be strung to your house, if you don't want to pay for it, quit whining about it.
You're doing tlike the telcos that are deploying next gen services such as FiOS and U-verse to highly populated urban and suburban areas did so all on their own.
Do some reading on the Universal Service Fund, an 11.4% TAX that ALL long distance users had to pay.
You want to hear about subsidies? The USF is the height of subsidies. No one knows where it went, meanwhile we keep paying it (at least those suckers who are still telco subscribers, not me!!!) Verizon is building out FiOS and AT&T is building out U-Verse, but NOT to everyone who paid into this ridiculous slush fund.
So you wanna talk about subsidies? Let's get back our 11.4% USF subsidy first. Then we can talk about who's subsidizing who. |
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| reply to the_ticket
said by the_ticket :said by neowulf:Not one single person I have ever talked to out in a "rural" area asked anyone to pay for their services. Most are hard work people who just don't have access to any such services at all... ...See this is the problem, people have it in their head that if a company has to put in services for others they will have to pay more "taxes" this simply is not true and you are just making up nonsense about you having to pay for rural peoples services. If this is simply not true, how is the broadband in the rural area going to get paid for? If a company is REQUIRED to build out to rural areas, the money has to come from somewhere, whether the build out is subsidized by the gov't, whether they have to raise prices for everyone else, or whether it comes from something like the USF. Either way, most of that money is coming from everybody else's pockets. IT IS JUST NOT COST EFFECTIVE TO SERVICE BROADBAND TO MOST RURAL AREAS, I don't know what part of that concept people don't understand. That's fine. Just give us back the USF and other taxes rural telephone subscribers have been paying all of these years. Either refund our money or build out the damn infrastructure in rural and urban areas alike. |
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| reply to the_ticket
said by the_ticket :said by neowulf:Electricity is the same price per 1 kWh as my home in Daytona Beach, Fl. Another thing... this statement is exactly what I'm talking about. Why do you think electricity costs the same price per kWh as your home in Daytona Beach? Do you really think it costs the same to bring that electricity out to that ranch in the sticks as it does to bring it to a house in a neighborhood that has 400 other homes? Its being subsidized. The transmission lines for the ranch were subsidized and the electricity is being subsidized... Huge, huge myth!
I live in Wantage, NJ. It's a nice little rural town. Electricity is cheaper out here than the rest of the state because it is supplied by a member owned cooperative (Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative). Every member owns a share, gets voting rights and even gets dividends!
It was done this way precisely because investor owned utilities did not want to service rural areas. We co-own generation facilities along with other co-ops, and buy only about 30% of our power on the open market.
THAT is the height of self sufficiency.
You want to hear about subsidies? Why the hell is PSE&G, a big investor owned utility coming here and saying that they will take our PRIVATE PROPERTY to run a powerline? PSE&G is running this powerline from Pennsylvania to Essex County NJ to supply big cities like Newark and almost certainly NYC.
In case you didn't understand I'll say it again.
Big city utilities want to take private property from rural land owners to run a powerline to supply power to big cities. The land owners will most likely not be properly compensated, and the decline in property values for neighboring property owners will be immense, and they will get NO compensation for it.
The land owners could of course say no, in which case the utility will simply go to the state and get the state to seize the land through eminent domain.
So again I ask, who's subsidizing who? |
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| reply to neowulf
In NJ if you sell at least $500 of agricultural products and have at least 5 acres you can qualify for farm assessment on your property.
It isn't all that much, but often is the only thing keeping farmers from selling their land to developers.
It is the same as WV - you pay the farm rate on the farm assessed land, your house is still charged at the regular rate.
The teachers union doesn't like it too much, but who cares. |
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| reply to fifty nine
Rural customers aren't the only ones paying USF. Everybody who has a telephone line pays USF, so if anybody's getting a refund, everyone is... tell me, what taxes do rural telephone subscribers pay that urban subscribers don't? We have to pay your outrageous termination fees. You just don't understand that the urban subscribers are the ones who subsidize your telephone and other utilities, whether its subsidies from the gov't or higher prices for all subscribers to compensate for the extra cost of rural development. If the telcos/cable-cos were allowed to charge rates based on what it costs to build in rural areas you would all get the picture, because your rates would be 4 times higher than that of urban subscribers. Fact is, they aren't allowed to. |
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| said by the_ticket :
Rural customers aren't the only ones paying USF. Everybody who has a telephone line pays USF, so if anybody's getting a refund, everyone is... tell me, what taxes do rural telephone subscribers pay that urban subscribers don't? We have to pay your outrageous termination fees. You just don't understand that the urban subscribers are the ones who subsidize your telephone and other utilities, whether its subsidies from the gov't or higher prices for all subscribers to compensate for the extra cost of rural development. If the telcos/cable-cos were allowed to charge rates based on what it costs to build in rural areas you would all get the picture, because your rates would be 4 times higher than that of urban subscribers. Fact is, they aren't allowed to.
Wrong, wrong and wrong.
You are correct that everyone pays the USF.
What you are incorrect about is where it goes.
62% of it is to subsidize "high cost areas." The problem is that the telcos do NOT define exactly what a "high cost area" is, and it definitely does not mean exclusively rural areas. In fact I'd wager that the high cost of FiOS and U-Verse is being at least indirectly subsidized by the USF. Because it is largely unaccounted for, no one will know.
»www.teletruth.com has much more info than I will post here. I suggest you take some time away from your uninformedd bashing of rural citizens and read.
As for your last statement - cable companies are absolutely allowed to charge what it costs to build out in rural areas. It is called a "line extension policy" and it is based on population density. If there is not sufficient population density, they are allowed to charge to build out to that area. Some have been quoted in the thousands of dollars, sometimes as much as $14,000 to lay cable to their homes. Many here have decided that getting satellite was a more cost effective alternative. |
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| First of all, this is not an argument about what the USF is. The USF is a joke, its done nothing but line the pockets of the politicians, corporations, and lobbyists. The fact that the money is largely unaccounted for reinforces my reasoning against subsidies of any kind. Even if only 45% of that USF money actually made it to rural areas, rural population only accounts for 20% of the total population, its still a subsidy paid for by the rest of the population... The rest is just being raided by thieves or going to people who don't "need" it.
The point of the argument is whether or not telcos/cable-cos should be REQUIRED to build out to rural areas. I am of the belief that they shouldn't be required, because that just means everyone else has to pay for it in the form of subsidies or higher rates. Your line extension policy example is not the norm. If it was, most rural subscribers would have rates through the roof. Furthermore, if you think your utility coop theory will translate to broadband deployment, why isn't it being done already? Maybe it is... but if it works so well, why do there need to be build out requirements?
If you don't believe there should be build out requirements, then there is no argument between us. I don't care about the technicalities of the USF, I just want it abolished and the PEOPLE's money returned. |
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| I think they should be required to build out to rural areas, because all along they've been collecting taxes and fees from rural customers for years now.
As it is now, Verizon and ATT aren't even building out FiOS or U-Verse to even moderately populated suburban areas under their control.
Rural areas also contribute more to the economy than you care to know.
Food, water, electricity, natural resources, fuel (oil, coal, gas, biomass, ethanol), interstate highways all depend on rural areas. They are even used for fiber optic broadband lines.
So since the big cities are getting so much from the rural areas, it is only fair that their residents who pretty much make your cushy life in the big cities possible get access to advanced services. |
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| said by fifty nine:I think they should be required to build out to rural areas, because all along they've been collecting taxes and fees from rural customers for years now. They've been collecting taxes and fees from urban customers too. Urban customers pay much more into it than the rural customers, therefore, its a subsidy.
said by fifty nine:As it is now, Verizon and ATT aren't even building out FiOS or U-Verse to even moderately populated suburban areas under their control. Of course they are going to build it out to the most profitable areas first. If an area is worth developing, they will probably do it.
said by fifty nine:Rural areas also contribute more to the economy than you care to know. Food, water, electricity, natural resources, fuel (oil, coal, gas, biomass, ethanol), interstate highways all depend on rural areas. They are even used for fiber optic broadband lines. So since the big cities are getting so much from the rural areas, it is only fair that their residents who pretty much make your cushy life in the big cities possible get access to advanced services. Wow... where to start on this one... You act like urban areas are just getting all this stuff for free. We pay for all that stuff. The food is subsidized by us AND paid for by us in grocery stores. We pay for water rights. We pay for coal and electricity, we paid for rights of way for interstate roads and fiber broadband lines. Just because you personally don't make any money on any of these things doesn't mean somebody isn't. As for your statement on "cushy life in the big cities," you've just proven how uninformed you really are... |
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| reply to fifty nine
said by fifty nine:said by the_ticket :
No one has a problem with you wanting broadband access, the problem comes when you expect the rest of us to pay for it. If you want broadband access, pay for it yourselves. Don't expect the rest of us to pay for it in the form of subsidies and higher taxes, and don't expect the Verizon's and the AT&T's to pay for it because its clearly not cost effective for them to do so. They aren't charities. The Cable/Telco's would be happy to provide you with broadband service if you paid for the lines to be strung to your house, if you don't want to pay for it, quit whining about it.
You're doing tlike the telcos that are deploying next gen services such as FiOS and U-verse to highly populated urban and suburban areas did so all on their own. Do some reading on the Universal Service Fund, an 11.4% TAX that ALL long distance users had to pay. You want to hear about subsidies? The USF is the height of subsidies. No one knows where it went, meanwhile we keep paying it (at least those suckers who are still telco subscribers, not me!!!) Verizon is building out FiOS and AT&T is building out U-Verse, but NOT to everyone who paid into this ridiculous slush fund. So you wanna talk about subsidies? Let's get back our 11.4% USF subsidy first. Then we can talk about who's subsidizing who. As I said above, I agree that the USF is the height of subsidies, and I think its a joke. I'm all for returning that money back to the people, especially since urban areas put the majority of the money in that fund... |
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