Cable TV Prices Rising At Four Times the Inflation Rate 286
An anonymous reader writes "A new FCC report (PDF) has found that U.S. cable TV prices are rising at four times the rate of inflation over the past two decades. 'Basic cable service prices increased by 6.5 percent [to $22.63] for the 12 months ending January 1, 2013. Expanded basic cable prices increased by 5.1 percent [to $64.41] for those 12 months, and at a compound average annual rate of 6.1 percent over the 18-year period from 1995-2013. ... These price increases compare to a 1.6 percent increase in general inflation as measured by the CPI (All Items) for the same one-year period.' Equipment prices rose faster than inflation, too. The report also found that the price increases weren't helped by competition — in fact, the prices rose faster where there were competing providers than in areas where the main provider had no effective competition."
Better service though... (Score:2)
The report also found that the price increases weren't helped by competition — in fact, the prices rose faster where there were competing providers than in areas where the main provider had no effective competition."
True, but it notes right in the article that 'expanded cable' is basic + the most subscribed to package, and in areas with competition that the extra $3 buys you more service on average in competitive areas. IE if people get a better deal they're willing to buy more.
Unclear in the article would be the effects of FIOS service, which is even more tightly bundled with internet services than traditional cable.
Re:Better service though... (Score:5, Insightful)
The truth is there are a lot of cable cutters. The basic subscription is only to get a break on Internet. DSL and basic phone service is the same thing. My home phone has no long distance plan at all. It is redundant and expensive compaired to my Cell or VOIP which include all of US and Canada as a local call.
WIth Netflix, Hulu, etc, unless you want the sports package, why would you even have cable at all, other than to get a break on the Internet package.
Intenet without basic TV is often higher in price or not offered at all, so the basic TV added is close to zero additional cost.
I've cut Cable TV long ago. I'm not an armchair quarterback.
When working nights, and infomercials plug up the daytime TV, there is little to watch, except on Netflix. TV seasons, science, etc shows can be watched at your convience commercial free. Cable companies hate that. To keep profits up, with cord cutting, they soak the sports junkies that need real time program delivery.
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Just a guess, but to see current non-broadcast television shows (e.g. Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Walking Dead, etc), sporting events on channels that aren't dedicated to sports (e.g. NBA on TNT), television and financial news talking heads (e.g. MSNBS, CNN, Fox News, etc), plus any shows that you don't want to wait months, years, or never to see on Netflix, Hulu
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plus any shows that you don't want to wait months, years, or never to see on Netflix, Hulu, et al.
One interesting side effect of my cheapness is that I've fallen so far behind on TV shows that they are all new to me when they hit Netflix. Because I don't see the commercials, I don't even know about current shows, let alone miss them. I hear about shows a little from co-workers and friends, but honestly TV just doesn't unite the culture like it once did - there are far too many choices for everyone to be watching the same show.
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That might depend upon the culture of the water cooler you hang out at... the fact that Game of Thrones is said to still be the most pirated tv show in history suggests otherwise.
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Game of thrones is the most pirated because HBO won't let it go. in order to watch game of thrones without paying $100 a month for cable(and yes that is what your bill is including the HBO pricing) you either have to wait 1 year and then pay full price for it from amazon, iTunes,etc. or you can pirate it and watch it a couple of hours after it airs.
HBO is killing themselves by not having even a paid for streaming system.
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You just have to decide if those shows are worth that much money. Do you need to spend $75-$100 a month just to get the latest Walking Dead, or can you wait part of a year until the episodes show up on streaming? Are the shows really that important?
I have found it a bit annoying that not all the movies I want are on netflix. But then I realize that with my satellite I never got a choice of shows anyway. I'd find a movie showing a couple times during one week only and then record it, but that was the cab
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Game of Thrones is on Amazon Instant Video already, though you get to see it one year after it airs.
Full of shit (Score:2)
Who was charging you $10 a month in 1994 for cable tv? Nobody that's who.
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Agreed. Dropped TWC almost 4 years ago, only have Internet (which might come with some television channels but never cared to look). Still too damn much money, but no other serious option. Netflix and Amazon with a Roku for films are good options (as long as it's a Roku 3 - Amazon and Roku seem to have broken the delivery on the Roku 1 and 2 but of course, that is just my experience and opinion - Netflix is great with a Chromecast, I sure hope Amazon and Acorn get added to Chromecast so I can toss these
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Too bad Hulu requires a cable subscription in my area
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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The truth is there are a lot of cable cutters. The basic subscription is only to get a break on Internet. DSL and basic phone service is the same thing. My home phone has no long distance plan at all. It is redundant and expensive compaired to my Cell or VOIP which include all of US and Canada as a local call.
I've effectively cut my cable several decades ago. Of course, I grew up in a non-cable house. Whenever I end up in a hotel/motel room I generally flip through the channels but end up on one of the 'how X is made' or dirty job type shows. Which I don't value at ~$50/month.
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but they only watch 17 channels. while it isn't always the same 17 channels, I would be shilling to bet on the 200 channels tha the average person gets that if they could have a bundle that only gave them 40 channels that included the ones they want for the same price they would be just as happy with cable as they are now.
right now cable tv providers are the most hated group. you don't get much choice you don't feel like your paying for something that you use(using just 10% of a service does that).
more money - less quality (Score:5, Interesting)
so (quality/quantity) * price is constant?
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Re:more money - less quality (Score:5, Informative)
I have a friend at BrightHouse Networks.
According to him (and I suppose he could be lying), it's the price that the content holders are asking that's driving up prices, especially ESPN.
He tell's me that ESPN gets about $30/customer in an all or nothing deal.
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Sorry. That's wrong.
The $30 figure is the amount each actual viewer of ESPN would have to pay if they were forced to pay for it themselves, but ESPN doesn't allow that.
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it's $35 per customer and it is the content guys driving up the prices
netflix pays out 75% of revenues for content
Re:more money - less quality (Score:4, Insightful)
I really wish cable/satellite would adopt "Chinese Menu" pricing for their mid-tier, and allow people who don't care about Disney*.* or ESPN*.* to pay the same price, but substitute HBO and/or Showtime instead (ie, pick two out of four... Disney, ESPN, HBO, Showtime... 3 for $10 more, all 4 for $18 more). I believe it would mostly be revenue-neutral for the cable/satellite companies, and would go a long way towards softening the sting of my monthly cable bill by letting me substitute two channels I don't currently pay for, but would LOVE to get instead of two expensive blocks of channels I never watch.
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Comcast trialed this is the Charleston, NC area, or did for many years. You buy a core package for basic service and then you can addon additional packs by category, sports, news, family, movies etc.. Last I heard of it it wasn't popular enough to keep maintaining and is being phased out. Most people were in the category that they didn't pay enough attention or make the effort to save money or chose to save money by discount hopping.
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so (quality/quantity) * price is constant?
I think you underestimate the influence of profit. Pure simple greed. That is mostly likely what is driving prices...
Perhaps also, the fall of the US dollar, it's not worth the same...
Question ... (Score:3)
Has there been a corresponding increase in service? By that I mean the number of channels delivered for the given tier, since cable companies usually pay the broadcaster a certain rate per channel.
(I don't subscribe to cable, so I don't know how things have changed over the decade since I've left home.)
Re:Question ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, we can now watch the same advertising on 300 different channels.
The rate is meaningless (Score:3)
All of those things don't have an industry set price, so they pass the price onto you, the customer.
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Since 1995 auto manufacturers have had to upgrade all sorts of technology, and so have web service providers. And yet....
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2-3 times more expensive is very different from "4x the inflation rate".
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There's actually a row in the results table that more or less answers that question: "Expanded basic price per channel."
That value only went up 2.1%, which is still higher than inflation but not by nearly as much. In other words, more than half of the cost increase from expanded basic came from content additions.
Easy solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't pay for cable. There really isn't much on cable tv worth watching that can't be obtained through other legal sources.
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Live sports is tough to find on other sources. Otherwise I would cut the cord in a heartbeat.
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HDHR Prime doesn't do OTA unfortunately. ClearQAM and CableCard only.
Keeping up with sports without cable is easy (Score:2)
Otherwise you watch ESPN after-game highlights which shows all the pivotal moments of the game in 5 easy minutes.
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If you want to watch it live, you go friend's house or restaurant/bar to watch it.
Unless friend is also a cord cutter and you can't go in a bar because you're under 21 or your kid wants to watch with you.
Otherwise you watch ESPN after-game highlights
ESPN is cable.
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Which is why I take my 2 year old to the family section of a local bar to watch college football on certain Saturdays in the fall because I'm not willing to pay for BTN to catch the games which aren't on ABC or ESPN.
Sports is part of the problem... (Score:2)
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Live sports is tough to find on other sources. Otherwise I would cut the cord in a heartbeat.
AM radio? Seems that it covers just about everything you might want, and then there's always shortwave if you can't find it.
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Get yourself some young kids and a wife with irregular hours at work... you'll completely lose track of sports :)
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Or you can make sure your wife likes the same college sports as you... then have epic battles over the professional level...
AT&T land line (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: AT&T land line (Score:2)
Maybe because less people have landlines these days, so ever subscriber pays a greater share of the infrastructure costs.
Re: AT&T land line (Score:4, Informative)
It's that and a general decline in long distance usage/profits. Before deregulation [wikipedia.org] the bulk of the profits for telephone operation came from long distance, to the point that local infrastructure and usage was essentially subsidized by long distance. Post-deregulation competition quickly drove down profits, and more recently VoIP and other non-POTS communication methods have further erroded profits.
The end result is that the bulk of the cost of POTS has been shifted on to local; you now pay for the cost of your infrastructure rather than the long distance "whales." Which arguably is how it always should have been, however POTS (and callers) benefited from the network effect so much that POTS likely wouldn't have been as successful if every subscriber was paying their own infrastructure costs from the start.
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the 'Whales' wouldn't have anyone to call otherwise, however.
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Gotta love all the surcharges. Especially the ones that the company says the government tells them they can charge (but doesn't have to).
Only data-based landline I have is internet. Don't care how many worthless bundles they throw at me.
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I want to know how come my telephone line has gone from $7/month in 1997 to $32/month today, with no change in service .
I think that's your problem right now. If you're sitting there getting increasingly screwed by AT&T over the cost of their telephone service since around 1997, then why the hell are you still with them? What are you waiting for, the two-decade mark?
Then again, the same could be said of cable TV subscribers. They've been getting reamed for decades, they know they're getting fucked, but they keep bending over more and more every time the company raises their already ridiculous rates. I never even hear
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And why shouldn't we count satellite and wireless?
I use Fios for internet, TheDish for TV, and I have a cell phone tether plan when I want to use my laptop on the road.
I agree that satellite internet access is probably a mistake unless you have no choice, but a 4G access point or tethered cell phone is really impressive for somethi
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You can't use something like Netflix over 4G. At least, not more than a few shows. Even crappy Comcast service gets you 250-350GB.
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I use T-Mobile 4G, and we use it as our ISP at home, we added a line and just use a phone as a wifi hotspot. I get roughly 25mbps of unlimited unthrottled usage. All https and streaming services work even after the "hotspot" quota is reached. Also for general http browsing once the tether max has been reached, use linux FF or have FF identify itself as the linux version, and tmo will think that youre browsing from your phone! Just about the only thing its bad for is gaming with the higher latency.
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> And why shouldn't we count satellite and wireless?
Satellite is broadband for the damned & desperate.
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"One choice is to do without."
And *that* is exactly the choice I made. I refuse to pay a monthly bill for a garbage service that acts as a medium for ad delivery more than anything. And an overpriced service at that. Not to mention the shitty programming, I'd rather watch paint dry (and as a bonus, that would be a much cheaper form of entertainment).
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with no change in service.
$7 in 1997 seems too cheap.
Did you get metered service back then? I remember that being an option where you only got X calls for the month and that reduced the price by like 75%.
Of course, even then you had to not pay extra for caller ID or touch tone (really? touch tone was extra?!?!?!) to get it that cheap. I suspect that there is some change in service between these two figures.
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Check your cable provider's rate for telephone. Then look for VOIP solutions instead.
Cable typically charges 29.95 or more + per month.
There are at least 3 VOIP providers that charge under $10 per month, including fees, which includes all of the US and Canada + and 60 minutes to about 40 counries.
I have an elderly relative living with us. We bought a phone adaptor. A Linksys PAP2T-NA was about $50 for the box so we don't rent a box. That box is discontinued. The SPA2102 replaced it. A Grandstream GPX1
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There are at least 3 VOIP providers that charge under $10 per month, including fees, which includes all of the US and Canada + and 60 minutes to about 40 counries.
I've currently got VoIP through Google Voice. I paid $20 one time to port my number over and no other fees. Service has been perfect, using an OBI box to handle it.
Alas, google is discontinuing this any day now. But it was a great deal.
In the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
There will be 5,000 channels and absolutely nothing to watch.
Outside of the baby boomers generation most individuals in my age bracket (28 here) gave up on cable/satellite television due to hyper-aggressive advertising policies, price gouging, and providing little to no value over services that frankly the internet does a better job of. It is simply undesirable to watch/use in favor of essentially anything else.
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Cannot wait for al la carte (Score:2)
... till then my cord remains cut.
TV completely not needed (Score:5, Interesting)
Said it before, I'll say it again. The worst thing the cable company ever did was refuse to give me free TV with my internet. Been well over five years now and I am more productive and lively. Sure, there are some shows I like. I can watch them online when I want to see them. I don't need TV for anything. Let them raise rates until they fail. We don't need them.
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The worst thing the cable company ever did was refuse to give me free TV with my internet.
WHY the hell would they do that? They pay lots of money for those TV channels. You would not be paying them any money for them. Why, from their perspective, is that bad?
Maybe did you mean that was the best thing they ever did, since your life is more "productive and lively" with no TV for the last five years?
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What about sports like NBA? :P I agree. OTA+Internet FTW.
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"Need" is a strong word. But in general, people who think TV is useless, are themselves guilty of using it poorly.
Do you know how many hours of science, documentaries, and news is available on broadcast TV channels in a give week? It's more hours than most people can watch... And do you know how much longer it would take to acquire the same information through textual or audio-only description? Certainly quite a bit more, even if it was available, which it isn't.
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Which inflation rate? (Score:2, Troll)
Anytime you talk about inflation, you have to be cognoscente of the fact that every government on the planet lies about it.
Their deficit spending, fiat currency, crony capitalism for the elite depends on it.
Look at Venezuela for example [zerohedge.com]
Or the US of A. [shadowstats.com]
I'd be willing to bet that if you price cable services in terms of real assets like oil, gold, silver, food, energy or even a subway ticket in NYC it would be a different picture, averaged out over the long term.
If you're taking the government's figures
Re:Which inflation rate? (Score:4, Informative)
As an exercise, I looked up BLS price data on various basic food items and calculated the annual inflation rate from December 1995 to December 2013. This is the period in which the linked article claims the official rate was 2.4%. Here's what I got:
Bread, 2.837
Beef, 3.744
Chicken, 2.712
Eggs, 3.147
Milk, 1.848
Apples, 2.682
Bananas, 1.485
Tomatoes , 0.760
Orange Juice, 2.448
Coffee, 1.549
So if the official rate is a gross underestimate, what gives w/ these annual rates? Or do you just assert that the historical price data is fudged?
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Weaning myself off cable (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been weaning myself off cable in stages. Six months ago I realized that I wasn't watching Starz enough to justify the $40/month charge, so I dropped it.
Now I'm coming to the realization that I watch Hulu+ and Amazon Prime as much if not more than cable, so now I'm on the verge of cutting my cord to Comcast and just steaming through my pokey old AT&T DSL line. It's not quite fast enough for a 1080p stream, but it looks acceptable to me at standard def on my 55" plasma. So there you go. Comcast has just priced themselves out of my life.
We should be able to buy the box with no outlet fe (Score:2)
We should be able to buy the box with no outlet fees like how it is in canada.
Yes in the usa you can get a cable card but on some systems like comcast you only save $2-$3 mo over a box due to there high outlet fees.
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Depends where in Canada. Videotron charges outlet fees for extra terminals.
And... (Score:2)
it's mostly crap, with ads.
A great (and true) saying: (Score:5, Funny)
"90% of Everything is Crap".
This applies to everything, including cable TV.
The remaining 10%? Well, 90% of that is crap too.
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But what if it's Scottish?...
Hedonic adjustments (Score:2)
They obviously forgot to do the hedonic adjustment to account for the larger screens people are watching on.
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Agreed, I was being sarcastic.
Not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
Cable tv is loaded with useless channels that the consumer is forced to pay for. Channels that most consumers never watch and/or never heard of come with the package and contribute to the cost of monthly access. Cable providers will never allow the consumer to pick what channels they want so the only solution is to cut the cord and subscribe to services like Netflix and Hulu. The other(not so legal option) is to torrent your favorite shows.
The majority of the blame for bundling goes to the networks actually. They force bundles onto the cable companies, the cable companies then turn around and pass those bundles on to their subscribers. It also doesn't help that they all compete on how many channels you get as a selling point for the consumer (so blame the viewers a bit for being stupid as well). I wouldn't be surprised if a good chunk of those rising prices are due to the networks as well. They are addicted to the fees they are getting from pay TV services. Just look at the carriage contract fights that have been popping up more and more lately.
The whole damned industry from producers to the cable companies is a rapidly getting out of control and it's just going to get worse. Allowing mergers between cable companies and content providers was a huge mistake and it's going to end up biting everyone in the ass eventually.
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It also seems that if I had to pay per channel that I'd be very very picky, even if cheaper than cable. On netflix that $8 a month is great for all those tv shows and movies, but I'd never pay $8 for just one or two shows. It might be better to offer a plan that lets you get say 8 shows for one price but you get to pick 4 from category A and 4 from category B; then pay a bit more and it's 16 shows, etc. Much more flexible than the traditional choice of basic cable versus extra/plus package versus adding
Broadcast is dead (Score:2)
$7.99 per month for netflix, $6 per month for a proxy server so we can watch BBC iplayer and stream live BBC TV...we never even bothered with cable; we haven't even got a digital aerial.
You don't miss what you don't have in the first place :-)
Especially the ads :-D
Re:we haven't even got a digital aerial (Score:3)
An antenna is tuened for a frequency band. Nothing special about a "Digital" antenna. A good antenna that could reduce or eliminate ghosting from multipath will work just fantastic for "Digital" TV. I never upgraded to a digital antenna.
Local Governments equally culpable (Score:2)
http://www.wired.com/2013/07/w... [wired.com]
Deploying broadband infrastructure isn't as simple as merely laying wires underground: that's the easy part. The hard part - and the reason it often doesn't happen - is the pre-deployment barriers, which local governments and public utilities make unnecessarily expensive and difficult.
Before building out new networks, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must negotiate with local governments for access to publicly owned "rights of way" so they can place their wires above and be
lol (Score:4, Insightful)
The inflation rate as reported by the federal government is complete shit. It's likely closer to 10%
The equipment they're talking about is vastly different than the equipment in the previous year. How many people switched from SD to HD in that time? That was one of the peak years for HD adoption.
Internet speeds across the industry jumped drastically in 2012 due to DOCSIS 3 rollouts. I, personally, went from 15mb/s to 50mb/s over night with no cost increase to me at all.
In 2012 most cable companies introduced the new pay as you go plans which allowed you to pay a slightly higher rate in exchange for no contract.
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Maybe inflation is higher (Score:2, Troll)
It is funny that when people observe that almost everything raise faster that inflation, they blame all these providers/producers separately, instead of question reported inflation in first place.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alt... [shadowstats.com]
If you look at shadowstats, last year inflation was around 5-%... as observed on cable service prices.
So real question should be not why cable service prices are rising so sharply, but rather, why CPI cheats? Answers are probably going to be more interesting that "rising cost of equ
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Hmm, let's look at gas prices (which are one of the basic indicators of US lifestyle and affect cost of most things)
http://www.randomuseless.info/... [randomuseless.info]
Year 2000 - 1.4-1.6
Year 2014 - 3.80
Factor of 2.4-2.7
Beef prices
http://www.criticalissues.us/B... [criticalissues.us]
Year 2000 - 285
Year 2014 - 480
Factor of 1.68
There were just two first things I have checked out of 'americal lifestyle' pseudo-basket. Then we have cable tv prices, as described in original post with factor of around 1.6.
CPI suggests difference of 1.34 between year
What drives ALL TEH TV NAOW? (Score:2)
The current market seems to be driven by a need to see major series as soon as they are released, if not sooner. Why is that? I hadn't heard many of my favourite albums until they were already 20 years old - what makes TV different?
Do what I did: (Score:3)
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Maybe.... The cable companies may end up having to sink a lot of money into their networks in order to deliver on the faster content delivery contracts.
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No they don't. They're just somewhat efficient collective resource allocation systems.
Exponential growth appears to be a requirement because populations grow exponentially.
If an economy can't keep up with the exponential growth of population, then there is less produced per person.
Re:Wow, that matches (Score:5, Informative)
You are stunningly misinformed. In fact the percent of Americans who are public employees is the smallest it has been since 1968 [theatlantic.com].
It makes you wonder where people get these ideas and why they feel so free to spout off without knowing anything. We have google, where is the disconnect coming from?
Re:Wow, that matches (Score:5, Informative)
You are stunningly misinformed. In fact the percent of Americans who are public employees is the smallest it has been since 1968 [theatlantic.com].
It makes you wonder where people get these ideas and why they feel so free to spout off without knowing anything. We have google, where is the disconnect coming from?
Fox news, Sean Hanity, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, a million Facebook posts about evil socialists taking jobs and voting Tea Party is the way out etc. Fox news is number one rated and tens of millions listen to right wing radio. They really believe that 50% of Americans all are welfare queens who make $45,000 and get free iPhones which they call Obama phones. Members of government believe the hype too which is why they are so anti Obama.
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the percent of Americans who are public employees is the smallest it has been since 1968
In 1968, America was fighting a major war in Vietnam, and had a space program heading for the moon.
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actually, it was a police action.
good thing we don't have any of those now...
Re:Um, the Atlantic? Really? (Score:5, Informative)
1. We were working to send a man to the moon (300,000+ people involved) which was NOT just some guys in "bunny suits" prepping astronauts and rockets in clean rooms at the cape... there were facilities being designed and built and staffed in many states. (it takes far fewer to maintain and use the stuff in later years)
I don't think you understand what "government employee" means. The vast majority of those 300,000 people worked at private companies that were completing government contracts related to the space program.
2. We were doing major construction on the creation of the interstate highway system (passed by Eisenhower in 1956, activity was very high in the 60's) It takes lots more people to plan and build such a system than to maintain it later.
Again, it's not as if the government went out and bought a bunch of backhoes and bulldozers to do the construction itself. Those highways were built by people working at private construction firms, not government employees.
3. We were fighting in Vietnam and at a very high Cold War strategic military posture with lots of HUGE highly-staffed bases all over the world; The US military used to do all its own work for things like base security, base food prep, grounds keeping, supply chain operation, troop transport, etc .... but now days many of these things are "outsourced" to civilian firms, and even the military itself is FAR smaller (the US navy, for example has fewer than HALF the ships it had under Reagan in the 80's and while THAT was higher than under Carter it was still historically lower than at many points).
You just proved the point of the Atlantic. You said that since the 1960s the military has vastly cut down the number of people it employs by outsourcing to private contractors and eliminating inefficiencies. Isn't this exactly what it means to have a small government?
4. Technology was SUPPOSED to reduce the workforce. Where Social Security checks required armies of federal workers to do the processing in the 1940's, it's now largely a computer task now with the payments often handled by automated "electronic funds transfers" (so the workers on-staff handle the human-interface functions and SHOULD be fewer than the number who used to work at SS). Given that much of what government does involves paper, records, and money, a big bloated government SHOULD require a fraction of the workers of decades ago, since all the work of computing numbers, moving and storing money, data, etc should be done my machines now.
This has happened. Today, Social Security Administration expenses as a percentage of the trust fund are less than one third what they are today. (source [ssa.gov]) But that doesn't fit into your pretty little narrative, does it?
Also, I'm sorry, but anyone who uses the Park Service as an example of big government is a fucking idiot. The Park Service gets .06% of the US federal budget. But wait, it adds up, doesn't it? What if we closed 500 agencies like the Park Service? We would cut government spending by 30%. Oh wait, no we wouldn't. Because the total of all non-defense, non-debt, non-healthcare, non-benefits spending adds up to 9% of the federal government. That's right, even if we shut down every "dispensable" agency -- from the FCC to the FAA, the DoE to the DoJ, the National Park Service to the Internal Revenue Service, the USDA, the USPS, the NIH, the NSF, the FDA, the FHA, NASA, the State Department, SCOTUS, POTUS -- we would only save 9% of the budget.
This is what all republicans conveniently ignore when they talk about big government. Big government isn't caused by all the agencies they love to complain about.
At least Obama was trying to chip away at the real problem with health care reform. No, it isn't
Dubyacable was coupon-eligible converters (Score:2)
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That article pretty much does say that the plans are very similar at their core, just that the heritage foundation plan had a bunch of other details to it that would have been much worse that the ACA. Basically, the ACA is bad, but it could have been worse. It could have been better, as well.
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The road to hell has not been maintained and is no longer safe to drive on.
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So you want your ISP to build out support for all of it's users to pay for the max throughput of each modem on it's network on it's back end?
Somehow I don't think you'll be able to afford that cost... nor will the grandma down the street who pays $40 for high speed internet so she can Facebook with her kids and church friends, as well as Skype with her grandkids once a week... and who ultimately subsidizes your
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OTA user here. With analog, I could get CBS, NBC and sometimes ABC (RF3,5 and 22). With the switch to digital, I lost all three. In Montreal we have CTV broadcasting on RF12, and ABC is on 13 (so they reduced the power going to Montreal to protect CTV, and CTV might be drowning ABC on the adjacent channel). CBS and NBC used to be VHF-Lo, so the signal pretty much got around obstacles. Now they're on RF22 and 14 (UHF) which is pretty much line-of-sight and doesn't propagate around obstacles. So what I could
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That might explain why the OP doesn't get much channels.