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One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

bbc.com

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Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#441

Post by vkou »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #429
dragonwriter wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, someone earning $155,000 USD (Equivalent to 125 GBP) will also be paying 6.2% in social security taxes, 1.45% in medicare taxes, and then another 6.2% in social security taxes (employer’s portion), and 1.45% in medicare taxes (employer’s portion). In the UK, there is also National Insurance tax on top of income tax, which works similarly (but is a bit more complicated.) The employer share is 13.8%, which…

Pretending that the employer is paying taxes for the employees is doublespeak popularized by large companies to justify why they want to stop paying it. It is not taxes. It's a contribution to a functioning society. Otherwise, employers would get access to employees with NHS without putting a penny in.

It is taxes. Taxes are a contribution to a functioning society, though! There's nothing wrong with them when they are used well!

> Otherwise, employers would get access to employees with NHS without putting a penny in.

It doesn't matter how you slice it, the penny still comes out of payroll. It makes zero difference to me if I get paid 50,000, and 10,000 of that goes to taxes, or if I get paid 40,000 and my employer pays 10,000 in taxes. But it sure causes a lot of spilled ink about whether or not its 'really a tax' and 'who pays'.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#442

Post by andy_ppp »

asdfman123 wrote: post #312
andy_ppp wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still always interesting to see how vested interests and rent seeking seems to be a big part of US business culture. I wonder if the US would be more or less successful without these uncompetitive business practices.

> vested interests and rent seeking seems to be a big part of US business culture This is also true about nearly every other country that exists or has existed throughout history. US is notable for being, on average, much more competitive and less corrupt. (But it's heading in the wrong direction, and that's only on average. Many countries have caught up, and a few others have surpassed it.

This sounds like American exceptionalism - I'm not sure the prison industry or the water industry being more competitive is good or that they are less corrupt than the state running them.

Corruption of markets happens because of no regulation or because of too much regulation. I personally think where to draw this line is an art and very difficult in an extremely polarised country like the US.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#443

Post by CapstanRoller »

jeremyjh wrote: post #387
CapstanRoller wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't they funnel you into a VoIP "landline" instead? That's what Comcast does around here. I think they ripped out the copper long ago.

They would run fiber to do that though. Hence GP's point that they will run SOMETHING.

In my area (Washington State, USA) this doesn't happen.

If you ask for phone service, Comcast will sell you a "landline" that just consists of a combo box cable modem and VoIP ATA. You can buy it with internet access or without, and they still give you the same equipment. The ATA part gives you an analog phone line to connect to your house phone wiring, but everything outside the house runs over existing coax infrastructure.

Maybe I'm not asking the right questions? It seems exceedingly difficult to get services over actual copper.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#444

Post by gameman144 »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #183
gameman144 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Striking provides a forcing function to reveal the actual value to the employer of your labor. In certain fields (e.g. medicine, academics) there are huge centers that represent the majority of jobs for a region. Specialized workers here find it harder to job hop, as there are fewer opportunities. Striking provides another means to better pay. Say you value my work at $40/hr, but are currently paying my at $20/hr. In…

I mean I might be biased because this strategy worked for me. But how about, hear me out. Instead of not working you try working harder and providing unique value to your employer. Hard to swallow for union types but it’s how I ended up being paid significantly more and having no issues buying a house.

This doesn't address the issue specified above. In this example, you already provide unique value to your employer at $20/hr over what they're paying you.

If you have no recourse when they value your work at $40/hr, what recourse would you have when they value your work at $60/hr but still pay you $20/hr?

Being a more valuable employee works great in combination with exercising leverage over your employer (quit-threat, striking, competitive labor market), since those threaten to take that value away from your employer if they don't play ball.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#445

Post by toyg »

0xDEF wrote: post #19
gumballindie wrote: post #14

I dont think people comprehend how deep the economic issues of britain are.

The uncompetitiveness of Britain has been obvious for decades. For a highly developed English-speaking country it is very underrepresented in software tech. Britain should unironically learn to code.

Tbh, as others said, coding is not the problem. Everything else is.

In fact, Britain is kinda the poster-boy for the thesis that "learn to code" is not a universal remedy for economic malaise. A large percentage of the population simply can not, and will not, work with computers at a level worth paying for.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#446

Post by asdfman123 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #442
asdfman123 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> vested interests and rent seeking seems to be a big part of US business culture This is also true about nearly every other country that exists or has existed throughout history. US is notable for being, on average, much more competitive and less corrupt. (But it's heading in the wrong direction, and that's only on average. Many countries have caught up, and a few others have surpassed it.

This sounds like American exceptionalism - I'm not sure the prison industry or the water industry being more competitive is good or that they are less corrupt than the state running them. Corruption of markets happens because of no regulation or because of too much regulation. I personally think where to draw this line is an art and very difficult in an extremely polarised country like the US.

No, it's not. You have to be careful about American exceptionalism, but America really did/still does lead the world in a lot of things.

It's still pretty good on the corruption index, although getting worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#447

Post by LordDragonfang »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #195
hammyhavoc wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BT works just fine. Have used it for at least 8 years without any fuss. I don't even know that I've connected to it unless I checked, it just does it. As such, I use very little cellular data.

If you mean BT Wi-fi that's not free. https://www.btwifi.co.uk/

Cox and Comcast/Xfinity do the same thing in the States. Free wifi using other paying customers' wifi as long as you also pay for it at home.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#448

Post by makeitdouble »

Symbiote wrote: post #76
makeitdouble wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As counterintuitive as it might be, I think the cellphone and mobile contract come last (thought switching to a lower plan or a MVNO is an option). There is a saying that if you don't have money you need connections, so as it gets tougher, communication becomes critical. In particular missing a message from your bank alerting you of a operation that could get rejected, getting mail from social service of paperwork yo…

Those things don't need contracts, just a phone with prepaid service. Top up £5 and be careful to make it last a couple of months, or potentially a lot longer (6+ months) if you can use WiFi and mostly receive calls and texts.

I don't know for the UK, I was expecting contracts to be better value and cheaper than prepaid. Let's say you're phoning 20 min every month and burning through 3G or data, having even a minimal contract is probably worth it.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#449

Post by toyg »

Neil44 wrote: post #257

1 million cancel broadband in a year? The entire population is like 65M so the number of BB connections is going to be what, <10M? And 10% of them cancelled and didn’t renew in a 1 year period? Doesn’t pass smell test for me.

Second ddg hit: "there were an estimate 28.1 million households in the UK in 2021". The actual Census (third hit) says 24.7 in England and Wales alone.

So the actual cancellation figure would be around 3%. Sounds reasonable.

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