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And?

...and socialism is bad... ummmk?

Any government providing to the citizens is bad. Governments should also not provide direction or regulation to business. In that case, what does government do?

The roads are funded by government public works. Socialist roads. Bad.

There are bad things about all types of societies and economic systems, but that doesn't mean the system itself is bad.

I'm picking up your sarcasm.

Actually, roads are paid (in the US) through Gas taxes.

It's not socialism because it's not the government providing the services, it's to be provided by private corporations. This is good for competition. I have noticed a lot of Americans branding things as 'Socialism' these days, maybe these people need to learn what it is before using the term.

Yeah... maybe some people should learn... wait... what's the word for a government funded program that all people have access to with out paying? Hint: It's not the word "free".

I've also noticed some Europeans don't correctly apply the word socialism to government funded programs and state paid health care. See what I did there? Painted a group of people with a broad brush. If you can do it, so can I... right?

And, moreover, roads are vital to a lot of things -- from national security to life.

Making everything "free" to people just makes the quality go down because the competition isn't there. No competition, no reason for people to have any desire to succeed in what they do.

Trying to compare government sponsored (highly inefficient) products that people would buy otherwise to a road which people would otherwise buy isn't a good comparison.

Sure, I wouldn't mind "free" Internet. But it's not free, and it won't make the Internet better -- only worse, when I can get it for $30 a month compared to another $40 a month in taxes. You can argue that there will then be competition for faster service, but that doesn't account for the increase in taxes I still have to pay.

Are you retarded or are you being sarcastic? I can't believe, given the current situation of US financial system, anyone could be that clueless.

As they said, so?

Is that why 70% of American roads and bridges are deemed unsafe? (America has some of the lowest taxes in the West.)

It seems that you are wrong in that belief. Just look at America now and the mess it is in in regards to infrastructure.




Its not "free". Its not out of pocket. Some just don't get the difference. If anything the way America is run now proves that your way of thinking is wrong because it is solely based on the profit motive and greed plays a very large roll with that and quality suffers a lot.i.e. American health care is some of the lowest provided for in the world. Americans also have the lowest quality of life in the Western world.

Canada does the same and quality of life up here is some of the highest in the world as well.

The problem with the US is because of the Cold War and all those years in conditioning to falsely believe that anything that helps the average person is evil. We now see the results of such limited thinking as the US is going down the toilet.


Here's something ironic. If that $700 billion Corporate Welfare bailout were sent to Canada it would just about pay off our ENTIRE national debt. Not bad for a "socialized" nation. Even taking into account the population difference our debt is still much lower.

Last edited by Foub on 28 Sep 2008 - 09:35

Oh, I do believe you have just engaged in a personal attack on me! I feel so honored.

Now, if you take your angry self and re-read my post. Everyone else can see sarcasm. Yet you seem to have missed it.

Yeah because democracy is perfect, huh?

Oh my god
Socialism is not opposed to democracy, it's opposed to capitalism.

It wasn't a personal attack. It was a serious question, as your sarcasm wasn't clear.

socialism is not intrinsicly bad, just like communism isn't

think before you open your mouth

Blame the actual States, they take the money and waste it on "other" things than roads, like multi year "studies" to see if it's viable to put up a stop light, yes seriously, it happened here in Pennsylvania.

And if your system is so good, why are Canadians coming to the US for Medical Care, at least those that can afford to get out of the queues and get service before it's too late.

Not an attack? "Are you retarded?"

Seems to be pretty derogatory on a personal level... Because it is.

It can sound but still is a QUESTION and not a affirmation.

"Plurium interrogationum" or you could say fallacy of questions is valid, yet tricky.

So, to avoid moderation, I can go around and stead of saying "You are a fooking idiot", I just say "Are you a fooking idiot?", and suddenly I can attack people with questions?

LOL

It's still bringing a personal attack into what should be a reasonable discussion about facts and issues. Just swap the first two words!

I'm not typing with my mouth... I'm typing with my hands.

No, it's because the government has redirected the funds from the gas taxes to pet projects... Then scream for more money to repair the failing infrastructure.

+1

Even US ISPs can offer those speeds, they choose not to because Cities and states don't force them to and also because ISPs have over sold their bandwidth, hence why Comcast is "enforcing" new monthly caps.

Something similar is working in Croatia. Speeds are up to 16mbits, but coverage is getting better every day. If you don't have ADSL, you can have 3G with up to 7.2mbits and that's not bad

That would never happen - we can barely keep our banks (at least some/most of them) from collapsing on us. *sigh*

This was my first thought too, but I'm sure it was the same once upon a time for electricity and water

I imagine the cost of providing it to all will be felt by raising existing prices significantly, which is a shame...

or is it going to be the governments responsibility to improve the infrastructure? in which case, i would expect there to be a tax hike somewhere along the line...

either way, it will cost!

And how is this the Governments fault? Badly run businesses go under, what a novel concept, and only because capitalism, not government forces businesses to run right or go out of business

Governments fault due to a lck of tazes to afford to keep the banks afloat- but low tazes are needed now to keep the economy afloat. It's ironic- moar tazes save banks, less tazes save people (on average) and keep jobs.

The US Government cannot do this sort of thing because it cannot afford to, it isn't tazing you enough to do so. But it's a good thing, honest. Less tazes= more money for you to spend on (hopefully domestic) products. Giving people jobs. And they can make money. And buy stuff, etc...

EDIT:
Okay, I kinda messed up my alignment on the KB, but not retyping... It's TAXES, not TAZES. Though they both hurt.

Last edited by wst50 on 29 Sep 2008 - 19:44

They never said it was broadband. They said it was acceptable.

heh, good thing its likely to change, for all those people stuck on dial-up ; this would be a good thing!

It's probably a poorly worded article. I think the EU is investigating internet coverage (Which some people label as "broadband", kinda like how some people think Internet Explorer is "The Internet", not broadband coverage. I don't think more than 50% of the EU will have broadband coverage, but they'll definitely have internets coverage.

You may be right but the way dialup access works there should be no reason why there is not 100% coverage unless they don't even have a phone line, in which case there are bigger problems. So I would assume that they want 100% broadband coverage.

Yeah, and a small town that wants electricity and phone service? To hell with 'em, why should we wire them up?

We should wire them up because electricity is seen as a necessary service to a modern society. Roads, access to water, waste management - these are all viewed as necessary services to the modern society. It may seem laughable to call the internet is a necessary service at this point in time, but it's quickly getting there (if it isn't there already).

Yeah but your college probably has a leased line between sites (Same sorta thing as my Uni). I have a habbit of doing speed tests at Uni as well (I get about 40Mbps speed test results) It's nice to dream

Unfortunatly, speeds of 6Gbps is really unrealistic for home users using current infrastructure. THe Uni can do it as they pay a hell of a lot of money for those links.

But hey as I said, it's nice to dream

Well Mike, I guess you need to do some home work before talking about external debt.

UK (for your information a EU country) external debt: $8.28 trillion - with a population of 60 million
US external debt: $10.04 trillion - with a population of 300 million

All other big EU countries (such as Germany and France) have also greater external debt per capita than the US.

Ouch. lol

What's bad is what countries are supporting all this debt. A good thing to know is that whoever owns your debt, owns your people. They can blackmail you or your country into anything.

Check here for a good list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...y_external_debt

Anyway, that is not really the point; everyone here in Denmark has a whole lot of debt, but, the difference is that we can pay that debt, in the US people are increasingly going bankrupt and that is the real danger.

Canada's and it is on the decline.

http://www.ndir.com/SI/education/debt.shtml

Its amazing to see just how much lower China's debt is in comparison to the US'.



Exactly.

That is large, but then I found this quote:

See paragraph “External sustainability” in http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2006/cr0686.pdf from IMF - "The U.K.’s role as an international financial center implies large gross external assets and liabilities…"

And? I don't care what debt other countries have; ours (us) isn't sustainable. And a Credit Card crisis is next.

Don't mistake a bunch of bad Home Loans with general debt, the problem is the banks were forced into giving bad loans to people they knew couldn't afford it to avoid being called Racists

Come again? You're actually seriously saying that banks gave out highly risky loans just so people wouldn't see them as racist? Honestly - and I don't say this lightly - that has to be the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time.
I'm going to try to educate you on this matter by giving you a very simplified version of the problem:

Banks make money off of loans. There are people who make money off of getting customers/loaners for the banks.
The problem here was that the people who were supposed to find responsible loaners became too greedy and instead got people who could barely pay anything. The banks were too greedy as well and completely relied on the positive market to make them a profit (they allowed loans that could only work if the market kept going well).
Then when the market started to turn in the negative direction, the people couldn't pay and the banks couldn't run.

Now what makes it all worse is that this sets off a chain reaction were house prices plummet (because of the increased number of auctions), banks go bankrupt, stock prices fall etc., and this is what we characterize as a crisis.

This has everything to do with the government and its complicated:
Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae
I dont want to hijack this thread any further. These are the culprits. Social program forced its way into the private sector and blew it up.

Governments can step in for certain services. For example, they can privatize public transport but still can mandate services to run to certain areas at certain times, even while it might not be so profitable for the private company to do so. Or they might privatize the land lines but mandate services to rural areas, although the private company would normally never do it. It is to make sure that public gets services and they don't become the victims of decisions only made with profit in mind.

In this context, EU sees broadband internet connection as a service every EU citizen is entitled to get even while it might not be very profitable for private companies to provide them with.

Baloney. Corporate greed, and Reaganomics, are responsible for this mess. Regulations are needed for a very good reason because of this.

And what President deregulated mortgages and banking?

I think the difficulty some people have with this story is considering broadband internet a necessity. It's weird enough thinking of any sort of internet as a necessity. I mean, it's just the internet. The broadband side of it is purely entertainment, and to call one kind of entertainment a necessity is laughable. From another perspective, any public services that can be accessed online (filing taxes, contacting your politicians, etc) are not significantly slower on dialup than on broadband.

err yup food counts..

the availability of food is universal in the EU last time i checked... yep no shortages here!!

this article is not about making it available for free!