I guess when I look today I have my choice between AT&T, Comcast, or a wireless provider for my ISP. I've switched when one got uncompetitive or I didn't like their pricing structure. I can get cloud storage and web hosting lots of places, so that's very competitive it seems. In the search world Google is big, but I've used Bing and even Yahoo at times when I didn't like the ad layers that came with particular search requests.
The government (FCC) was just in a huge fight last year with the ISPs over net neutrality, with the content providers winning over the ISPs. How much competition are you looking for?
While quietly ignoring millions of people in America only have one choice as far as broadband providers...
It gets reported over and over again but never underestimate agenda driven people's capacity to ignore things they don't want to hear.
Anyone who thinks America has a vibrant free market competitive broadband market has either never actually seen what a vibrant broadband market looks like or they are on crack.
Now having said that America is a big place with lots of empty parts (those are the areas where Republicans reside). So it would be mighty expensive to give everyone the same broadband choices as are available in high density areas in other countries. But that is still no excuse to pretend the "free market" is solving the problem in America.
Or, to be less opaque, does the economy in general benefit from the presence of billionaires and multimillionaires? Do they invest more (or in better ways) than if the equivalent capital was invested by public bodies?
Or is there no benefit, but they are a necessary noxious by-product from the economy that we have to just deal with?
Um... If you don't retire a multimillionaire you by definition are living a subpar life. Even in so called "affordable" areas in the United States homes are going for $300,000 to $500,000. Healthcare costs aren't exactly cheap in America. If you own a nice home in a cosmopolitan area and a couple of nice cars you are going to need a million just to pay the on going property taxes, insurance and maintenance.
No one who has actually run the real numbers thinks a 65 year old multimillionare is "rolling in it". If their net worth is $2 million and they live a modest life they may be okay, but they are not making it rain.
I think having millionaires pay a bit more tax makes sense. I mean they can afford it. But demonizing them especially on the low end makes no sense.
Here is some simple math. There are plenty of places where a nice but not lavish home costs $400,000. And there are multiple areas where property taxes are 2.5%. That is assuming you live in a city vs in the middle of the country. So you would need to pay a minimum of $10,000 a year for the privilege of living in a home you already own. That does not include maintenance, insurance, etc. That is before you eat, pay electricity, put gas in your cars, etc. If you stop working at 65 and have the misfortune of living 20 more years that's at least $200,000 you have to pay in property taxes for your $400,000 house. So when you lump in the value of your house, cars, life insurance policy, etc $2 million net worth is not exactly f-you money.
This response was written from the American perspective.
