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Fighting to Replace America’s Water Pipes

nytimes.com

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Re: Fighting to Replace America’s Water Pipes

#61

Post by rayiner »

orf wrote: post #59
rayiner wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you? Swisscom charges $80/month for 100 Mbps symmetric fiber, which is a typical price for gigabit fiber in the US. https://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/internet-television-f... . Gigabit plus TV plus phone is about $140/month, which is the same as I pay for the same package here in Maryland. Comcast offers 100 down plus TV for $60/month here in MD.

The UK, but my point was that just because people have access to something doesn't mean they can actually access it - if it's way too expensive for most people, for example. Similar thing with healthcare in the US I guess. I pay $50 a month for the internet and two mobile contracts, with 4GB data each and unlimited texts/minutes, from BT. TV is free (freeview, with hundreds of channels). You can pay for Sky or Virgin…

It looks like BT is over $50 per month for 76/19 fiber alone: https://www.products.bt.com/broadband. That’s not a great deal compared to any US metro with fiber. Verizon offers 50/50 for $40, and AT&T offers 100/10 for $60. Am I missing something?

Re: Fighting to Replace America’s Water Pipes

#62

Post by chrisper »

rayiner wrote: post #46
chrisper wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking here: https://www.bakom.admin.ch/bakom/en/homepage/telecommunicati... It seems Swisscom owns some lines, but not all of it. Like some of Swisscom Internet goes on lines that is not owned by them. I guess a lot of the households in the mountains and other large terrains do not have fiber. If you look here: https://map.geo.admin.ch/?topic=nga&mobile=false&lang=en&bgL... Plenty of households have >=100 Mbit/s In…

85% of Americans can also get 100 Mbps. It sounds like you might be in some place like Zurich, where the local power company deployed fiber and allows ISP to provide services over it. That’s a good model, but it’s not legally required. For the most part, Swiss telecom regulation is very similar to that in the United States.

Do 85% of Americans actually get symmetric 100 Mbps?

Re: Fighting to Replace America’s Water Pipes

#63

Post by Spooky23 »

twobyfour wrote: post #53
Spooky23 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flint had nothing to do with old pipes. It was about bad management and bad engineers whose incompetence resulted in poisoned water. Those individuals were held criminally responsible. Unfortunately, society and the citizens of Flint bear the cost and consequence of their misbehavior.

Actually, the old pipes were a major factor. You see, without the correct chemical treatments, the old pipes were releasing scale that had built up over the years. You see, old lead pipes are safe once they build up a patina; but untreated, acidic water erodes that patina (and also leaches lead from the pipes more readily) and allows the lead to enter tap water. Even with proper treatment, when lead pipes are disrupt…

Of course they are a factor. So is not having billions lying around to rip up every street and building connection to water. Especially in impoverished cities that can barely afford street lighting.

Without the crisis created by criminal negligence, you had a much more sustainable situation that could have been addressed while controlling impact to consumers of water.

Note that I'm not agitating for old pipes. Far from it -- but in a world of limited resources, advocating for magically conjuring up money to do wholesale replacements of water supply (and sewer, as disrupting old pipes will disrupt old sewers) is a fantasy that distracts from solutions to these engineering problems.

Re: Fighting to Replace America’s Water Pipes

#64

Post by baldfat »

rayiner wrote: post #58
baldfat wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take out the Inner City Schools (Which gets 50% of the funding since it is property based funding) and US is one of the tops in the world. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/propert... Massachusetts as a state would be in the top in the world right their with Finland, and that includes Boston http://blogs.wgbh.org/on-campus/2016/12/6/if-massachusetts-w... Also our Universities are also the top educa…

Inner city schools do not get less of the funding. Property taxes only account for half of K-12 funding. Federal and state grants to inner city and rural schools account for the other half. Here in Maryland, for example, Baltimore spends about the same as Montgomery County, a wealthy DC suburb. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-2... . > When federal dollars are included, just five states are…

> Inner city schools do not get less of the funding.

These are all based on the public records, please consider why you stated that the funding is equal? Federal funding for education has also been less and less.

http://www.openpagov.org/education_revenue_and_expenses.asp

(My city) Allentown SD per student = $13,949

(Next town over) Sailisbury SD per student = $21,519

(Highest in the state) Lower Merion SD per student = $28,495

Screen Shot of Data:

https://imgur.com/a/DMjl7

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/pa-high-court-revives-scho...

"Here is ti challenge this statistics: Data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that high-poverty school districts spent 15.6 percent less than those in the group with the least poverty.

In Pennsylvania, that difference was 33 percent"

Federal Funding title 1 for Inner City Schools funding per student is quite low, averaging about $500 to $600 a year. 50% of public schools qualify for federal money and the 14 billion works out to much less than most people believe. It amounts to a 5% increase in funding for some schools.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-federal-spending-on-d...

Here is the Heritage Foundations paper on how Inner City racial groups get more money and so there is no unequal funding problem based on race. This is just crazy statistics gymnastics. http://www.heritage.org/education/report/the-myth-racial-dis...

My point is not race it is socioeconomic disparity at the school district level and Heritage wants to say school in districts favor the poorer schools. Poorer schools in School District isn't the problem it is school districts getting under funded.

Funding isn't the answer but why should my daughter or son have 9 gym classes a year (School doesn't have a gym, nor a library room, and certainly no art class room) She also gets 9 art classes and 9 Music classes a year.

They also don't get recess due to funding problems for monitors. My daughter in kindergarten got no recces from August till January. Though she had 2 hours of reading and 2 hours of math per day. http://www.macon.com/news/local/article28555831.html

Re: Fighting to Replace America’s Water Pipes

#65

Post by rayiner »

baldfat wrote: post #64
rayiner wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inner city schools do not get less of the funding. Property taxes only account for half of K-12 funding. Federal and state grants to inner city and rural schools account for the other half. Here in Maryland, for example, Baltimore spends about the same as Montgomery County, a wealthy DC suburb. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-2... . > When federal dollars are included, just five states are…

> Inner city schools do not get less of the funding. These are all based on the public records, please consider why you stated that the funding is equal? Federal funding for education has also been less and less. http://www.openpagov.org/education_revenue_and_expenses.asp (My city) Allentown SD per student = $13,949 (Next town over) Sailisbury SD per student = $21,519 (Highest in the state) Lower Merion SD per studen…

As you can see in the WaPo article I linked, Pennsylvania is a huge outlier. Nationwide, including state and federal funding, poor districts get only 1.7% less than rich districts. In many states, like Maryland where I live, poor districts receive slightly more funding.

Re: Fighting to Replace America’s Water Pipes

#66

Post by rayiner »

chrisper wrote: post #62
rayiner wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

85% of Americans can also get 100 Mbps. It sounds like you might be in some place like Zurich, where the local power company deployed fiber and allows ISP to provide services over it. That’s a good model, but it’s not legally required. For the most part, Swiss telecom regulation is very similar to that in the United States.

Do 85% of Americans actually get symmetric 100 Mbps?

Most 100 Mbps service in the US is cable, so asymmetric. But I think fiber is the only widely deployed technology that can give you 100 Mbps symmetric. Fiber coverage in Switzerland is about 30%: https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/document.cfm?doc_id=47090 (see page 30). So if most households can get 100 Mbps, it’s probably not symmetric, but asymmetric VDSL2 or cable.

Re: Fighting to Replace America’s Water Pipes

#67

Post by baldfat »

rayiner wrote: post #65
baldfat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Inner city schools do not get less of the funding. These are all based on the public records, please consider why you stated that the funding is equal? Federal funding for education has also been less and less. http://www.openpagov.org/education_revenue_and_expenses.asp (My city) Allentown SD per student = $13,949 (Next town over) Sailisbury SD per student = $21,519 (Highest in the state) Lower Merion SD per studen…

As you can see in the WaPo article I linked, Pennsylvania is a huge outlier. Nationwide, including state and federal funding, poor districts get only 1.7% less than rich districts. In many states, like Maryland where I live, poor districts receive slightly more funding.

On average in USA poor inner city school receive 15% less. That's the actual numbers. Some states have a more fair funding system and than there is PA. BUT if you look at the bottom states in Education, Miss, WV, and VA they allocate less money to education. In PA a teacher makes about $42,000 first year and in WV you get $28,500.

Re: Fighting to Replace America’s Water Pipes

#68

Post by rayiner »

baldfat wrote: post #67
rayiner wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you can see in the WaPo article I linked, Pennsylvania is a huge outlier. Nationwide, including state and federal funding, poor districts get only 1.7% less than rich districts. In many states, like Maryland where I live, poor districts receive slightly more funding.

On average in USA poor inner city school receive 15% less. That's the actual numbers. Some states have a more fair funding system and than there is PA. BUT if you look at the bottom states in Education, Miss, WV, and VA they allocate less money to education. In PA a teacher makes about $42,000 first year and in WV you get $28,500.

From the WaPo article I linked above:

> When federal dollars are included, just five states are spending less in their poorest districts than in their wealthiest. Nationwide, the average disparity drops from 15 percent to less than 2 percent

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