One of the provisions of President Biden’s American Jobs Plan is to spend $100 billion bringing broadband internet services to “more than 30 million Americans” who live in rural “areas where there is no broadband infrastructure that provides minimally acceptable speeds.” That’s $3,333 per person or about $8,800 per household.
Rural home in desperate need of high-speed internet.
Who are these people who deserve such a big subsidy? Well, I’m one of them. Here in rural central Oregon, DSL speeds are barely faster than dial-up. The alternative is satellite, which is pretty fast but I don’t like the idea of paying by the gigabyte. That’s just me; some of my neighbors have it and it works pretty well for them. Satellite is available everywhere, so it’s not like any rural Americans are physically denied access to high-speed internet.
My main point, however, is that Biden either thinks, or wants us to think, that rural people are all dirt-poor farmers deprived of the benefits they could get from watching Netflix on cold winter nights. I’m sure you can find some of those, but they are far from a majority of rural residents.
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