Cord Cutting Caused By 74 Percent TV Price Hikes Since 2000, Says Report (dslreports.com) 173
A new study by Kagan, S&P Global Market Intelligence finds that cord cutting is being caused primarily by a 74% increase in customer cable bills since 2000. From a report: That increase is even adjusted for inflation, and it should be noted that individual earnings have seen a modest decline during that same period, making soaring cable rates untenable for many. This affordability gap is "squeezing penetration rates, particularly among the more economically vulnerable households," the research company added. As their chart illustrates, prices for multichannel packages have steadily risen from just below $60 a month in 2000 to close to $100 in 2016. All while incomes remained largely stagnant. As customers grow increasingly angry at cable TV rate hikes and defect to streaming alternatives, most cable operators are simply raising the price of broadband (often via usage caps and overage fees) to try and make up for lost revenue. And because most parts of America still don't really see healthy broadband competition, they can consistently get away with it.
Price hikes... (Score:2)
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What has cable Internet got to do with it?
Pure Cable TV (multichannel) bills have increased by 74%. Not including any charges for Internet services or Netflix.
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It's what spread decent broadband speeds actually capable of streaming video - making it possible to have TV without traditional TV service. ADSL/VDSL has OK speeds now for that, but still wouldn't have without cable competition.
The 74% increase is driven by milking existing customers to cover the subscriber loss, but they're only driving away their remaining customers.
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No cord cutting then, because there wasn't an alternative. Now there is.
Instead of cable TV, you may enjoy internet TV, netflix, youtube,... . Or even drop the 'TV concept' and just surf the web all day. The TV is no longer unique - both news & entertainment can be had in other ways.
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Cable Internet took off in 1997, it was only slow to reach rural areas. You must have been too young to remember the "net days" of 1995 and 1996 when fiber optic cables were being run across the country. I was in college at the time when our state representative stopped by the college campus to give a speech and do a Q&A session, the first question asked was when cable Internet was going to be delivered to our area, it was the most important topic of discussion for all of the students there. As much as
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No.
I'm saying that having Internet only + air TV gives you more choices than cable did in 2000. Netflix + over-air HDTV + Amazon Video + Youtube. Who needs more unless you're a rabid sportsball fan?
People are dropping the TV part of cable because it doesn't offer much over just having an antenna and a good Internet connection.
Sensationalist statistics (Score:1)
A 74% inflation-adjusted increase since 2000 would be around a 150% raw increase.
That means the same service that cost you $100 in 2000 would cost you around $250 now.
If you believe that, I have some swampland in Florida that would be perfect for you.
Re:Sensationalist statistics (Score:5, Informative)
You're right, don't believe that inlation since 2000 has been 100% (doubling the 74% post-adjusted increase as you have).
And I'm right [usinflatio...ulator.com]. From 2000 to 2018 it was 44.5%.
I also don't believe your base rate, because there were a number of stories in 2016 reporting that the average had just crossed $100/mo.
And I'm right [cnn.com]. In 2000 the average was reported to be about $40/mo.
That means that your numbers are indeed swampland-sales quality.
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You're disagreeing with math. For the claimed numbers to be true, what cost $100 in would have to $250 today. Adjust as needed for your actual 2000 cable bill. Nowhere did I claim that the average cable bill in 2000 was $100. Try again.
Re:Sensationalist statistics (Score:5, Informative)
No, I'm disagreeing with facts. You factually claimed an inflation rate that is incorrect to come up with a "150% raw increase" that is false -- it was 107%. You also alleged a service cost in 2000 of $100 despite a summary that expressly stated the packages were "below $60 per month," and came up with a current service cost of $250 today despite a summary that also expressly stated that service costs were $100/mo in 2016 -- but now act as if people reading your reply would not infer that the "service" that you were referring to was the same service being discussed in the summary. That was deceptive.
Your math may be perfectly accurate, but your model, basis, and conclusions are bullshit.
You try again.
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That was 18 years ago. Per the summary (and other news), the average crept above $100/mo in 2016.
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What they're saying appears to be the average cable bill in 2000 was $40. If you adjust that for inflation in 2017 dollars, it's $57.
The average price in 2017 was $100. 57 -> 100 is a 75% increase.
You're right! 75% is nowhere near 74%
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Sorry if that was too subtle for you. Simply stating that the average bill went up between 2000 and now without evaluating what services people were actually paying for then and now is, to put it generously, disingenuous.
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Thanks for the clarification, Comcast Guy.
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You mean how people now pay for a dozen different premium add-ons now, when back in 2000 there weren't even a dozen to choose from?
Effectively meaning the servicing you were paying for in 2000 doesn't exist now without a bunch of "add-ons"
That is... unless the average person pays for more than internet, phone and tv on their cable bill now?
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"As their chart illustrates, prices for multichannel packages have steadily risen from just below $60 a month in 2000 to close to $100 in 2016."
You need to improve your reading comprehension. That was an apples-to-apples comparison. TFA said nothing about "average bills" with additional services such as bundled telephone serv
I had a 3 way bundle (Score:3)
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There is no way you're a real person
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Back then cable TV premium package meant a handful of movie channels, a couple sports and news, etc.
Now it gets you several dozen movie, a dozen sports or more, and Video On Demand. Back in 2000 people still paid Blockbuster to rent movies. And back then it was glorious standard def.
Yes, prices have gone up. But cord cutting only saves you money if you only consume one or two services.
Why would VOD cost you more per month. VOD is a pay per view type service that should lower your monthly fee and most cable VOD that I've seen is more expensive that amazon, redbox, vudu, or any other VOD service. I'm amazed that they can get anyone to pay for their VOD service when there are so many cheaper alternatives. I definitely wouldn't want to pay extra each month for the privilege of overpriced VOD.
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That said, Comcast has a very extensive library of "free" VOD selections, depending on what channels your subscription includes. When I had uverse, their HBO VOD selection was terrible, with comcast it looks like the whole catalog is there. It's basically identical to HBO GO.
My box will also tell me if I tune into the middle of something and there is a VOD option. I can click a button an
Re:Sensationalist statistics (Score:5, Informative)
What used to cost us $60 cost over $150 when we dropped cable. We went from 20Mb to 100Mb, picked up Netflix, Hulu & Prime (commercial free, multi-viewer packages) and still came out at least $40 cheaper a month. We can't watch everything we might want, but we can always find things we actually want to watch.
Split the hair any way you like. Cable's been constantly rising in price and there's no added value for the added cost. Cable isn't worth the money any more.
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My evolution was:
- Paid about $60/mo and we only watched 4 channels
- Started watching less TV couldn't justify the expense, downgraded to $40/mo package which lost 2 of the channels we liked
- Picked up Netflix for $8.99/mo
- Realized we watched Netflix 5x more than cable, so cancelled cable
- shake our heads when we think how more much we used to pay for so much less value
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I'm interested in your swampland.
Though I don't have the 2000-vs-2018 figures, I do know that my cable TV bill went from about $32 in 1998, to a little over $50 (don't remember exactly how much) in 2006 when I canceled it. Some people who still pay for TV say their bill is around a hundred dollars, and I don't think they're lying.
Perhaps your point is that everyone is understating the percentage it has increased, since it has actually tripled?
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That can't be right (Score:5, Interesting)
They've been telling us online piracy was the cause of it, not their price hikes.
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They've been telling us online piracy was the cause of it, not their price hikes.
Of course, when I hear that kind of logic, I keep hearing "the beatings will continue until morale improves".
Well, duh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Fuck 'em. Couldn't happen to a greater bunch of guys outside the music industry.
Sharter (Score:1)
Well at least due to the agreement for the merger of Sharter TWC and BHN they won't be able to introduce any bandwidth caps or overage fees till at least the early 2020's by then we should be full swing into 5G cellular which will probably be the final nail in the coffin for the cable industry.
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>> 5G cellular which will probably be the final nail in the coffin for the cable industry
That's not how bandwidth works.
Neglecting the CONTENT Issue. (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the programming. Who want's 600 channels of Reality TV? Does anybody watch that stuff? It's crap.
Look at Netflix, something like Luke Cage or Altered Carbon. I just can't find content like that on cable, even with premium channels. And then there's the cable box rentals. It's over $200/month, and my local cable company kept dropping the sound out, or the video out, during climatic scenes.
At one point I realized I could drop cable, still have unlimited internet, and save enough money that I could BUY A NEW DVD every day of the month at a local store with change left over. Snip Snip. Goodby Cable. Goodby commercials & advertising. And good riddance!
Re:Neglecting the CONTENT Issue. (Score:5, Insightful)
Reality TV is the real killer in this. That's what drove my parents off of it. They both liked scifi/fantasy/documentaries and then those channels went more and more reality TV. When they pulled the plug late last year, the 4 channels they used to watch in the US were wall-to-wall reality TV and the same here in Canada. Building them a plex server with whatever shows/movies they wanted loaded on it was a far cheaper choice.
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There is a strange cycle in entertainment. I'm willing to bet it has a name, but if it does I don't know what it is. Anyway, the cycle goes like this:
1) New style of delivering entertainment on an existing medium is devised.
2) Style turns out to be very popular and profitable.
3) Competing entertainment sources on the same medium gradually adopt the same style despite originally being from different market fragments.
4) Style becomes so saturated in the market that it drives large segments of the market awa
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Yeah, you save a ton of dough by picking subscriptions very precisely by what you want to watch rather than lazily accepting you need 600 channels of reality TV so that you "have something to watch".
I did some figurin' about two years ago, and it looks like I still spend about $27 a month [blogspot.com] for sports and a few shows I particularly enjoy. And I feel like that's extravagant. ;^)
Just depends on where you like to put your money, I suppose.
Likely not the only reason (Score:5, Informative)
When I look at my Satellite channel lineup ( full package* except premium channels. Eg: No HBO, Showtime, etc ) a rather large percentage of channels are of material I will never watch.
Channels:
In languages I don't speak.
Religious channels.
Home Shopping style channels.
Infomercial channels.
When I actually took the time to cull out all the crap I didn't want to see, I was left with maybe twenty channels in all. Maybe.
So, perhaps the cord cutting isn't solely because of the price hike, rather the fact the typical user gets a really piss poor amount of content to watch and they have begun to question why they're spending so much on what is, in reality, so little.
*I only have a dish because I get it at a crazy discount. If I was paying full price for the available content, I would not have it at all.
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but i suppose you were watching it before it was available that way
definitely scratches the itch post BSG
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thanks for letting me know
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How did you get the crazy discount?
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Same way you get one for XM. Tell them that you're looking to quit, and haggle down. It's normally $22/mo, I'm paying $9/mo for their 'all access' stuff. Been doing that for 5 years now, it's not that hard to do.
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Ah. I wished this worked with other companies like Spectrum. :(
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Ah. I wished this worked with other companies like Spectrum. :(
Yeah, they've always been jackasses. Try the direct retention dept, might have better luck.
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It didn't work either for anyone. TWC worked though. Stupid Charter. I wished there were competitors in this rural area. :(
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Stupid Charter. I wished there were competitors in this rural area. :(
Know that feel. In FL I only had one choice for cable, and up here in Ontario, only had one choice for years.
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The fixed cost is huge, but the marginal cost is nearly zero.
Giving you just the 20 channels you maybe watch costs almost the same as giving you those 20 plus 80 channels of crap.
In fact, they probably get paid to deliver the home shopping channels, so the cost of 20 might actually be higher than 20 plus 80.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Some can't get OK antenna reception (Score:2)
why would you pay for cable if most of what you want is local network affiliates?
If jcr is anything like one of my co-workers, they tried an antenna but could not receive a steady signal due to distance or obstructions.
You could redbox the movies for less than the cable bill
Redbox (new releases) is not a substitute for, say, TCM (curated older motion pictures).
It's very hard for old folks (Score:5, Interesting)
I sometimes talk about cord cutting with my elderly fixed income customers, but it's not a rewarding experience. They find the alternatives confusing, and I haven't figured out a good way to explain things to them. Even just clarifying that cancelling 'cable' is not the same thing as cancelling all services from their cable company involves more time than one would think. Then I find I have to start getting into:
Bandwidth caps: "I like to have the tv on in the background 16 hours a day"
Service confusion: "What channels do I watch? I don't know."
Lack of a familiar interface: "How do I surf channels?"
What usually breaks me is when they mention in passing that they have a "VIP" bundle. When I have to get into alternative voip services and devices on top of streaming services and devices, it's time for me to give up. At that point I've been clarifying stuff for fifteen minutes and have to help someone else google the right ink for their printer.
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Don't worry about it... they'll be dead soon.
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This is a common problem for older people that means they don't have access to the best deals. For example, a lot of energy companies now offer discounts if you have an online-only account with no paper billing or phone contacts, but older people often can't get those due to lack of technical skills.
Older people are often the ones who need these good deals the most too. Worse still, companies often see these older customers who rarely switch provider as cash cows.
One proposed solution has been to force the
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Like an AC mentioned above, over the air TV is the answer to the issue of someone with a bandwidth cap who wants to watch 16 hours of TV a day. In fact OTA should be a major component of most cord cutting solutions, if it's available to you.
Some over the air broadcast TV benefits (some are dependent on your location and/or type/location of antenna):
- Unlimited free programming
- All the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CW) usually in HD
- Better picture quality than cable or satellite
- A lot more channel o
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I've come to this with my parents (ie, old people) - I don't try to ask them to give up their cable but I work very hard to make sure they don't pay a dime more than they need to (ie,they leverage the "retention" discussion with Comcast regularly).
My way to save parents money and stick it to Comcast at the same time.
the same for cord cutters (Score:2)
I signed up for cable for an introductory $35/mo rising to $60/mo after a few months. That was about two years ago. When last I checked the internet only bill was $93/mo. It just goes up and up and they rely on you not checking.
So I figured I would see if it was cheaper to switch back to DSL. I was a DSL customer before I got cable, it was enough for me and they are advertising higher speeds since I last looked. So I call the DSL company, explain that I'm a returning customer, give them my address and ask w
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more to the story (Score:2)
short-sighted (Score:2)
yes, and more (Score:1)
in 2001 I got cable for $35 teaser price. A year later it went up to $45 or 50. Over the next 7 years in increase several times to around $90. During that period a lot of the shows I liked to watch were bumped up to higher tiers. In 2008 I moved. The old cable at $90 no longer had most of the shows I wanted to watch at the $90 tier. The new location started at $110 or something, and I bailed.
I figure I only want to watch TV a limited number of hours a week. I don't find any shows an absolute "must watch." S
Very little worth watching (Score:5, Insightful)
When I cut the cable 4 years ago, a big part of it was that there was nothing that I wanted to watch. The speciality channels that used to have interesting content were full of reality garbage. The networks were full of dreary CSI spinoffs and knockoffs. I didn't subscribe to the premium channels because cable was already expensive enough. Overall, cable just wasn't worth the money. The only thing I watched was the weather, and even that had gone from detailed forecasting to dogs playing in the snow. I'm willing to pay for quality content, but it just wasn't there. But there's always something to watch on Netflix or Crunchyroll.
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So, you say you have 13... errm, I mean, 1300 channels of shit on the TV to chose from? [pink-floyd-lyrics.com]
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price is the reason? (Score:3)
for me price had hardly anything to do with the reason i don't have cable tv anymore.
1. there is nothing interesting on, reality rubbish, reruns after reruns of old stuff, soaps, idol contest type of things.
2. ads at the beginning, in the middle & at the end and then ads between the ads, and ads about ads... horrible, just like browsing the web without an adblocker.
Not About Price (Score:3)
It's not about price. The whole idea of watching a "channel" that streams some content only at a specific time that someone else chooses makes no sense to me when there are other options. Yes, you can do DVR, but that's just a crutch and you are SOL if your DVR wasn't set up for whatever specific content you want to watch. Cable is starting to offer more "on-demand" content, but the interface and breath is still usually a tiny fraction of what the major streaming services do.
At the end of the day, cable TV is just a lousy user experience compared to streaming. This is especially the case for people who only watch TV intentionally- not just to have something on in the background.
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Open letter to cable TV providers (Score:3)
Price Hikes? (Score:2)
Oh yes, I see the logic, we have a bloated overpriced service that so many people don't want because they seek their entertainment in a fashion they have more control over. We have a network we can also sell , but make less profit on then the service. So logically we are going to expand the offerings of the service and require people to pay more for it. Or better yet, we will charge less for cable and internet bundled together then for internet stand alone.
How about, ask people what they want, and sell i
idea for slashdot poll . (Score:2)
Do you have cable?
Do you watch cable only on demand?
Would you pay for cable if it didn't make your internet cheaper?
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This looks fun, let me play
Do you have cable?
Yes.
Do you watch cable only on demand?
No, but mostly yes.
Would you pay for cable if it didn't make your internet cheaper?
Short Answer: No.
Long Answer: That is not the way I look at it. I pay for internet and literally they throw in cable for free. The only exception is a small cable box rental fee (which we keep to only one box).
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exactly my point, even of 'the people who have cable' many of them are not actually buying cable they are buying internet. So it makes no sense the 'cable' prices are going up.
If you can afford it... (Score:2)
I've dropped my wired Internet with the local AT&T monopoly and switched entirely to mobile Internet. It's expensive as fuck, but at least my dollars are no longer propping up the monopolistic cable/DSL/fiber regimes. And it keeps getting cheaper. By the time 5g hits, we'll all be able to do the same thing and we can finally bury the corpses of Comcast et al.
Price hike? Heck, I don't want it for free... (Score:2)
So, with "customers" like me, what the heck future does cable TV have, probably a terrible one as not only will the "me's" leave, but I suspect that TV will migrate more and more of its content to complete dumbasses which will drive more people away, not just not appeal to them, but people with half a brain w
Re:Econ 101 (Score:4, Insightful)
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So you'd be perfectly happy having the option of buying precisely one type of car or none at all? One type of TV? One type of table?
None of these are necessities, so if you'd rather have a choice of, say, backyard grills, it does matter.
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Except that shareholders in large corporations tend to be other large corporations, executives and board members in large corporations, and mutual funds, all of which are likely to rubberstamp board recommendations.
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What I am hoping is that companies learn valuable lessons from this. Such as "you don't have a captive market", "customers can only take so much pain", "beware of raising prices without raising value", and so forth.
Re:Econ 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
And that, kids, is how the free market works
No, cable TV pricing and service is pretty much the poster-child for what happens when we don't have enough competition in the market. The new internet streaming services you get at $10-15 per month are more indicative of the free market. Netflix and Hulu can't arbitrarily raise prices at will because they're competing with each other for market share.
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You forget that this so called "free market" is exactly what happened here. Without any regulation (thus "free market"), the biggest providers push the smaller ones aside and gain an monopoly. After that it's raising prices and raising prices, because there is no competition left.
Yep - Isn't "free market" great?
Re:Econ 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
You forget that this so called "free market" is exactly what happened here. Without any regulation (thus "free market"), the biggest providers push the smaller ones aside and gain an monopoly. After that it's raising prices and raising prices, because there is no competition left.
Yep - Isn't "free market" great?
This seems to be a common misconception. The "free market" doesn't preclude regulation. It relies on it. Without regulation, you simply have anarchy, and a free market can't function correctly - or at least, as efficiently. From ancient times, the most prosperous free markets have co-habited with a strong government to provide oversight and regulation, which offers a safe haven that in turn provides for a greater focus on economic development.
Also, a lot of the monopolistic tendencies of cable companies are due to regulation of the WRONG kind, preventing competitors from even entering the market in certain areas, or preventing local co-ops from forming to offer an alternative option. Like almost anything else, regulation can be a double-edged sword depending how it's used, either helping or harming consumers.
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Telecommunications are a natural monopoly and always will be. When it costs $2 Billion to wire a small city the very nature of the business would prevent another provider from spending the same capital expenditure. This has nothing to do with regulation, nothing at all.
The only reason we even have 2 providers in some areas is because the FCC deliberately prevented cable companies and telephone companies from entering the others business. A decade later when the FCC allowed this rule to collapse and the cabl
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Of course it is capitalism, they used their capital to buy a monopoly, classic capitalism. What it is not is a free market.
Don't get confused and think that free market equals capitalism as capitalism strives to get rid of the free market so the capitalist can rake in the profits without the effort of actually competing.
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by $20-$60 dollars in my area by imposing bandwidth caps
Yup, because all those people shouting "cut the cord!" from the rooftops somehow imagined that the big telco companies would just sit idly by, while their profits dropped. With less fools happily paying $100+/mo for 100s of channels of garbage, the costs of keeping the cable company in the black just gets passed on to the rest of us.
the current (Republican) administration isn't likely to regulate them for abusing their duopoly (yeah, there's one other provider, who's exactly as bad).
At least with the option of another broadband provider, you can take advantage of any "new customer" promotional rates by switching between them. My neighborhood is served by
Re:Cox just raised the price of internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Have a look at a list of countries ordered by standard of living. There's different ways of measuring that, but most shake out about the same.
Now take a look at the common factor among them. Strong social policies. No, not communist, nor entirely socialist, but a mix of socialist (*gasp*) policies and regulated capitalism. It's almost like using limited socialism in some areas and limited capitalism in others works better than either alone.
Maybe the answer to the problems in the US is more capitalism, less regulation and an 'I've got mine' attitude. But probably not.
Now, you're probably either a troll or a pot stirrer, so this isn't really aimed at you. I'm hoping that chipping away at the reflexive socialist=bad that crops up might make room for some reasoned discussion on actual change and not just another round of more-of-the-same.
Just because somebody has it worse than you (Score:1)
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Just because someone has it worse than you, doesn't mean you have it any better
Er, what? By definition it does. Literally, in the literal sense of 'literally'.
Your quality of life is an _objective_ thing. It's not subjective.
Did you mean that the other way around?
Not your best post.
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Does your life improve the more people around you suffer? Your life isn't better than it was the more people around you suffer, and indeed, it puts you at higher risk of crime. Granted, you could be a sadistic person who enjoys watching other people suffer, in which case carry on and enjoy the show.
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Does your life improve the more people around you suffer?
No, nor did I state that. Did you read the post that started this? It was comparative standards of living based on country.
In a static comparison, if someone is worse than I am, then I am - by definition - better.
If they become worse, relatively, then I am better, relatively.
If they were the only ones that changed, then my life is unchanged, but my relationship to them has changed.
There's no causal link, nor was it implied.
you could be a sadistic person who enjoys watching other people suffer
You are reading _way_ more into this than was there.
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Bernie only wants votes from people who can spell, mouth breathers like you should not vote.