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Drug dealers are poor?....on paper maybe but, not in cash in pocket. A drug dealer would use up 250 minutes in a matter of days and then they'd be out of business until next month.
Ya, they should pay their fair share of taxes on that money. I'll bet if Obama came after a dime of it there would be an all out war.
i have a prepaid cell phone, so this fee/tax is embedded in my payment so i do not see it explicitly.
is it a flat monthly fee or a percentage of charges or something else?
prepaid cell phones are regressive to begin with (because the first few minutes are pricey and then they get cheaper the more minutes you buy), is the USF charge also regressive, e.g. does someone with a prepaid phone who uses 100 minutes a month pay the same amount as someone with an unlimited phone plan?
ATT offers a universal life line to low income people and has for years/decades. I imagine it's funded the same way. A lot of folks only have cell phones nowadays. I imagine that's the rationale behind this.
that's not entirely true, there are various qualifications, so it would be more accurate to say "some low income people"
by government standards, i am actually (barely) considered "extremely low income" (they also have categories for "very low income" and "low income") and i can't get one of those universal life lines.
You are comparing cell phones to what they were during Reagan? Really?
They were a luxury item during the 80's, now you can go to Toys-R-Us now and get a pre-paid phone for $20. Technology gets smaller and cheaper as time moves on. Some of us are not stuck in a time over 2 decades ago.
you can get a base model prepaid tracfone for 9.99 or 7.99 when it's on sale.
The FCC wasn't created until 1996. Lifeline was started in 1985 (Lifeline Program for Low-Income Consumers | FCC.gov). I have no clue how it was funded before the Universal Service Fund, but it was still in existence.
I believe the FCC was created shortly after the emergence of commercial radio, which would date the FCC probably to the 1920s.
There is no need for the poor to have modern day luxury items at the expense of the taxpayer.
Nothing in the Constitution even comes close to authorizing the use of public funds for such an expenditure.
A cheap cell phhone is a luxury item today? how about for people who don't have a landline?
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