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Kathy Baker
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Moyers guest: Internet company 'bullies' charge 'a lot' for access but give 'second class access' The story |
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Robert
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Here in the UK we have some competition but I feel we are over a barrel, the big telecoms outfits know how to charge and not provide a service. I have only had two ISP's since 2006, I changed to my current ISP in 2004. I have always tried to select a small but capable ISP. Big enough to have the right gear and backup but not too big for their boots. What really upsets me is with the current setup I have a copper wire connection so I have to have a phone line too. Which I don't want. That costs me about £400 a year basically for nothing. |
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blackfox
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interesting reading ,but compared to the u.k you still have it very easy ,we might pay less for our internet (thats also debateable ) BUT we get taxed on everything FAR FAR and above what you do .we pay income tax on earnings ,v.a.t of 20% on everything we buy bar food ,around 80% tax on fuel diesel or petrol ,road tax on ours cars (variable) but the money is not spent on road repairs ,council tax on our homes ,water rates (tax) for our water .we have very little in the way of jobs for our rising generations as various goverments have thrown open the flood gates of cheap immigrant labour .even as a pensioner the money i paid into my pension fund which i was taxed on at the time is now taxed again as income . i would love to swop places with you but i don't think either of us would survive these days  p.s and the golds all sold mine and the goverments  |
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richw
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blackfox wrote:interesting reading ,but compared to the u.k you still have it very easy ,we might pay less for our internet (thats also debateable ) BUT we get taxed on everything FAR FAR and above what you do .we pay income tax on earnings ,v.a.t of 20% on everything we buy bar food ,around 80% tax on fuel diesel or petrol ,road tax on ours cars (variable) but the money is not spent on road repairs ,council tax on our homes ,water rates (tax) for our water .we have very little in the way of jobs for our rising generations as various goverments have thrown open the flood gates of cheap immigrant labour .even as a pensioner the money i paid into my pension fund which i was taxed on at the time is now taxed again as income . Actually not sure that's true. In the US now a newly qualified airline pilot earns $21K a year. And that's a well paid job. For youngsters growing up and starting out there now many of what would have been well paid blue or even white collar jobs are now breadline or don't exist at all. And the safety nets the UK still have, (National Health service etc) are not there. |
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jk
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Well this seems to be an international problem. It is about providing maximum profit for director bonuses and shareholders. Ultimately it is all caused by the Wall Street shuffle. The stock markets are 'managed' by analysts who predict what a company will do in future quarters. These data are then used by pension fund managers to purchase 'best performing' stocks that provide maximum yield for the pension fund money that is invested. If a stock performs well then it yields well but expectations also increase until a plateau is reached. This is exactly what is happening now. Companies are not using profits to invest sufficiently well in improved machinery and infrastructure as they need to provide more for investors. Personally I think that distributable profit (bonuses, shareholder dividends) should be not more than 5% per annum (approx) of a company's capitalisation. So if a company has a stock value of £â‚¬$100M then its profits should not be more than £â‚¬$5M. If this was to occur this either indicates a product/service that is sold at excess profit e.g. Telecoms services and so should be subject to either Government price control or a windfall tax. This is typical of the banks, pharmaceutical, telecoms and other industrial giants. However there are cases when that the company is a new technology startup in which case it should be allowed this excess profit as an offset against R&D cost or to generate more jobs in that company. I know this flies in the face of greedy capitalist thoughts but since greedy capitalism is really the 1% feeding off the 99% I dont have a problem with this ethos. |
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Kathy Baker
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$2100 is below the poverty level. I had a good friend who was a pilot. His two favorite jokes about aviation rules were "don't drink with-in ten feet of the plane and don't wear your uniform while applying for food stamps." |
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Eric
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Kathy Baker wrote:$2100 is below the poverty level. I had a good friend who was a pilot. His two favorite jokes about aviation rules were "don't drink with-in ten feet of the plane and don't wear your uniform while applying for food stamps." Very good. A friend of mine flies 747s and he reassuringly (?) refers to commercial aviation as 'hours and hours of boredom, periodically punctuated with seconds of blind panic'. |
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KenRay
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It's rather amazing to me that everybody wants a free ride and no one wants anyone to make really big money. I have yet to see anyone on welfare provide a job for anyone but the government lacky doling out his money. Who do you think actually creates most of the jobs that exist,the millionaires or the day laborers. I LIKE good ole free running capitalism and am not ashamed of it. I don't think profit is a dirty word and I don't in any manner feel I can dictate how much is enough. I don't hear any great hue and cry about the high remuneration that entertainers,atheletes and artists get yet anyone on Wall Street is fair game. |
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jk
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Well I dont mind profit but excessive profit is not healthy. If a product costs a $1 and is sold for $1000 then by any reasonable thought process that is greedy profit. We all seem to know right from wrong but morality and ethics are somewhat more difficult to define. I agree that millionaires create more jobs than day labourers but they have a responsibility to do that. If you have more then it is your responsibility to give more back not evade your duty! This is why the USA and UK are currently failing as they are or have become me, me, me societies. The excessive salaries paid to entertainers, artists, athletes and other sports personalities has also allowed the Lance Armstrong culture to thrive. The Banks, Wall Street and UK Stock Exchange merely have more zeroes on the end of their excesses. Not Getting caught doesnt mean you have clean hands! Man is a greedy species, I make no apologies. |
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richw
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KenRay wrote:It's rather amazing to me that everybody wants a free ride and no one wants anyone to make really big money. I have yet to see anyone on welfare provide a job for anyone but the government lacky doling out his money. Who do you think actually creates most of the jobs that exist,the millionaires or the day laborers. I LIKE good ole free running capitalism and am not ashamed of it. I don't think profit is a dirty word and I don't in any manner feel I can dictate how much is enough. I don't hear any great hue and cry about the high remuneration that entertainers,atheletes and artists get yet anyone on Wall Street is fair game. Actually Ken, I agree with most of what you've said here, I'm a capitalist I believe in wealth creation and have made the point about entertainers and athletes compared with CEOs myself before. However there needs to some balance, I do not want to return to feudal times where a few people effectively own the rest and I feel that this is where Western society is in danger of heading. I also believe that wealth is created by companies that do something of value, make something or provide a service of some kind. Companies like Apple, Microsoft, even WalMart would be good examples. Even bankers have a part to play here, by finding ways of funding ventures and providing avenues for investment. However this is not what Wall Street does any more, they are now playing games with things like 'Derivatives' (a zero sum game where no wealth is created). They have consistently been found to be corrupt with numerous examples of market manipulation and insider trading, and there has been very little comeback. They are really no longer creating wealth, just redistributing what's left, and they are shuffling it away from Joe public into the hands of the ultra wealthy. Across the break out of the global financial crises the top 1% of the wealthy in the US actually improved the wealth by around 20%, and then the UK and US governments performed large 'bailouts' with Tax payers (future) money (done on huge public debt-most of it not to China but to the same institutions they were 'bailing out'? by injecting cash into some that were failing, henc propping up the debts and assets of those that weren't) and most of that ended up in the same pockets. The kind of capitalism that I believe in is the same thing most Americans would have understood that to mean in 1950s through to early 90s, the same thing that president Truman believed in and he set up successfully in post war Germany, (a legacy that is still doing well today). It's the same capitalism that the Rockerfellers believed in and for a modern equivalent Bill Gates who is doing some truly wonderful things with his wealth now he's retired from Microsoft. It's about generating wealth and making a worthwhile contribution to your society at the same time. The modern Wall Street mob in my view are closer to successful con men and fraudsters coming up with ever more compex and clever ways of moving money out of your pocket and into theirs but without adding anything to the pool. As a result most folk end up working harder and harder for longer and longer with a lot less to show for it. |
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Bob Bowen
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You hit the nail on the head Rich. It's the money gamblers inside financial institutions that have created the melt down with unreal bonus incentives. When RBS can pay £300m in fines for the Libor scandal out of their bonus pool and Barclays make a Billion pound profit from tax avoidance schemes sold to wealthy customers and yet the state\society can not care for the old and sick adequately it worries me. |
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jk
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Spot on Rich. Much better said than the way I was saying it. |
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jk
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Seems like Australia agrees with me.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21406745 |
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jk
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This explains a lot of things in life ? http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130212-why-you-really-hate-cyclists Not only the hatred of cyclists but..... bankers, and other free loaders. |
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Robert
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Censored... As a UK internet user I am not permitted to see that page. Am I in China or the UK??? Attachment: Screen Shot 2013-02-13 at 22.54.10.jpg (Downloaded 23 times) |
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Eric
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richw wrote:KenRay wrote: For a long time I have wondered what would actually happen if they closed all the financial institution for 6 months...or longer! |
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jk
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My view on the financial crisis with the banks was that in a truly capitalist society then these banks would have been allowed to 'fail'. The need to bail them out was driven by some other factor that I cant fathom. It was not about protecting the little man and his investments as in reality the governments dont actually care that much! |
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jk
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Robert wrote:Censored... Do you have url for this page ? I get the same from Spain for some of the UK content. There is no option to purchase the content just this feeble excuse that the content is only available if you live in a different country either in/out of UK. In the EU this seems to me to be breaking rules allowing free access to markets and content. I have actually sent in a complaint and recently I was asked to fill in a BBC questionnaire and I complained about content being unavailable. I wait to see a change of policy. |
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blackfox
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its what i noticed last year in poland ,we only had one english t.v channel bbc world news ,but totally unlike bbc news at home .in fact i got more factual current world affairs by watching al jazeera . my personal view is that t.v and papers for that in the u.k are guided into what they let us know ,and for a long time we have been fed what the government think we should or should not know .in other words a propaganda or crowd control media .shades of george orwell . hence the smoking ban ,they knew this would close down lots of pubs and working mens clubs ,(meeting places) large industry has been allowed to disappear another meeting place for working class men .they would rather the common populace was sat at home being fed propaganda on state sponsored t.v just my own point of view but is it far from the truth ,i knew the farmer that organised the fuel protests and his brother personally , i also know for fact that the fuel protests fizzled out because he had a visit from the expression was (men in grey suits ) .the warning whatever it was had the desired effect the protest stopped and he later became a mp before his untimely death .hmmmmmm  |
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Robert
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jk wrote:Robert wrote: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130212-why-you-really-hate-cyclists That is the URL which is in the address bar. |
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Robert
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Rich has kindly sent me a PDF containing the story. Very interesting, the Fehr and Gachter experiment produced interesting if not unexpected results. Mmmm. jk wrote: This explains a lot of things in life ? |
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jk
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Robert wrote: jk wrote:  I thought that the content was much more revolutionary than the content in the url that I posted. I really find this 'censorship' to be completely contradictory as it just piques interest. |
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