>
>Say for instance that you're a Internet Hosting company and
>you're paying an "upstream provider" for access? It's pennies
>on the dollar compared to what we pay now.
>
>E.g. It is a fatuous argument to claim that paying $50 for
>Broadband service is cheap, when you consider it costs a
>fraction of that to provide it.

what are you trying to say? because companies try to make a profit we shouldnt consider any service they provide as cheap?
>
>
>The Govt. isn't going to be making a profit off of this or
>"lining its pockets"

of course they wouldnt...the govt would never raise taxes higher than needed to fund a program and move the money into a local slush fund...


>As for the US just being "First" and now we have to pay off
>old tech Investments, while others get to run wild with our
>innovations and improve upon them isn't quite correct:
>
>-Here in the US we made a lot of STUPID investments in
>infrastructure and technology that is no longer used or wasn't
>as adopted as people thought it would be. Technology that was
>being developed nearly simultaneously around the world and our
>neighbors just made better decisions.
>
>-Don't confuse the size of our economy in terms of the # of
>people and money involved with being a technological leader,
>Japan and S. Korea have been head of us in many ways since the
>80's.

and this justifies free wireless internet how?

>-A lot of the innovations of the last 10 years happened via
>people all over the world creating things and in some cases,
>the foreigners were ahead of us from Jump. For example,
>Europe's cell phone service has been ahead of ours for years
>simply because they went in a different direction due to
>having a stronger demand for cell phones than US, (less space
>for land lines).
>
>-Since our foreign neighbors produce more engineers than we
>do, we wouldn't have had our Tech Boom without those engineers
>coming to the US for school. Now a lot of those engineers
>aren't even bothering coming to the US.
>
>-We've been doing a lot of research and manufacturing overseas
>since the 80's, meaning that we've been paying foreigners to
>come up with our innovations and build our products for some
>time now.
>
>-Yes, the US innovates a lot - but the reason that other
>countries are moving ahead of us isn't due to us just paying
>for the first round of new tech, as other countries have been
>moving haead of us for nearly two decades now and in many
>cases, started the first round with us, made the same
>investments and than accelerated ahead.

and how does this relate ot funding free wireless internet?