Linkfest: Monday Updates
I was not planning to do a Sunday Updates post this week, but two items simply could not be ignored.
ITEM: Earthlink is scrapping its “free” municipal wi-fi service in Philadelphia. The plan, widely touted as the model and blueprint for similar plans across the country, was such a dismal failure that the firm could not sell it any at price, not even for scrap and spare parts (indeed, they even offered to pay non-profits to take it off their hands, with no success). I have been critical of the Philadelphia plan from the beginning and reminding readers that wireless Internet access is simply not a legiitmate public good for the pesky reason that it is both easily excludable and not a natural monopoly. (I should know, I just paid 50 Danish kroners — $10 — for four days’ worth of the stuff.)
ITEM: State and local governments, which are exempt from the financial accounting rules imposed on businesses, are continuing to dangerously underfund their government employee pension plans, according to a GAO report, which notes that the self-reported figure of $750 billion in unfunded liabilities is “based on assumptions that some analysts consider too aggressive, including projections about how the investments of pension funds will fare and how long retirees will live.” I have been warning for years about the public pension gap, which like any government budget deficit will have to be closed either with astronomically higher state taxes or astronomically higher interest rates on municipal debt (or perhaps even a return of wisdespread municipal bankruptcies).
Filed under: Uncategorized