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From: bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.consumers
Subject: re: basic phone service for poor/old
Message-ID: <843@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-Jan-86 01:36:07 EST
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.843
Posted: Wed Jan  8 01:36:07 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Jan-86 03:00:32 EST
References: <279@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 72

From: early@tonto.DEC (the higher we climb, the better the view)

>1) If  I  understand  you correctly, if very old and very poor people are 
>granted free 'basic'  telephone  service;    that  means  every  old  and 
>indigent  person  will  be  entitled  to  'their'  personal  free  phone, 
>regardless of their living arrangements.    (  I  am extending the logic, 
>because  in  places like Massachusetts 'free'  services  tend  to  become 
>extended,and it's the working class that tends  to  pay  the bills, along 
>with the TAXABLE corporations.  I highlight taxable, because BU isn't.

You are right, you are confused. This was a consumer issue and was about
a charge being tagged onto phone bills to aid the indigent. AT&T is *not*
the IRS, so your comment about TAXABLE is irrelevant. Also, remember,
BU as a tax-free university as you mention is on the receiving end of
that pie and would gladly kick their grandmother down a flight of stairs
before losing out on a piece of that pie to pay her phone bill :-)
More to the point, we also pay phone bills. More to the point, you are
silly if you think my opinions likely have much to do with the tax status
of the company I work for, I doubt yours do either (you probably don't
even know what the tax status of DEC is, neither do they probably.)
If taxes and/or charities are not to come from either those who work
or the corporations they work for, then where in the heck *might* they
come from? Don't bother, I understand, you weren't to be taken seriously.
If you do not think that Universities have traditionally, BU included,
provided at least as much benefit to the society as paying their taxes
would have that is too bad, but again, an entirely different issue.

>2) Under what conditions do you propose "free" phone service ?

If the implication is that because we see it is complicated to adjudge
the truly needy we should therefore allow them to starve rather than possibly
make the error of letting a nickel slip into an undeserving hand I am
quite certain you *are* having trouble with such decisions. Leave it to
others and just pay your bills. I suspect a reasonably workable solution
to this could be worked out and yes, horrors, an efficient system would
allow some abusers, otherwise you are probably paying most of the money
to bureaucrats triple-checking cases rather than getting anything to the
needy at all (we approach this situation in our welfare system.) A common
error of people is to confuse moral and economic concerns, guaranteeing
no abusers of a charity system is a common example of this, sorry, thems
da breaks, it aint a perfect world. No one will ever build a perfect
charity disbursement system until the recipients are the source of the
honesty and in such a world I doubt charity would be necessary (it would
be a utopia.) Until then, we do what we can and hope the balance is in
'our' favor (that is, a high percentage of them that gets are needy.)
It is unfortunate how the press has fanned these flames of 'welfare cheats',
personally I think we have worse problems in this world than charity abuse.

>3) I think the issue is to complex  to  be adequately discussed in a few 
>lines at everyone elses' expense.

But you couldn't restrain yourself?

>I think you have a good idea, but I think  it  should  be  tied  to TOTAL 
>assets,  and the phone must be directed to something like a  911  number, 
>and  not  permit  any calls except emergency calls, to prevent systematic 
>abuses.

agreed, but again you are back to how to administer rather than the existence
of charity which is what the original note was about.

In some desperate attempt to draw this back to the original issue, it was
a consumer gripe about attaching a subsidy to phone bills to aid the indigent.
I think my point was that of all the consumer abuses going on getting all
fired up about the possibility of paying for a phone for some such person
didn't seem worth the adrenalin regardless of possible abuses (other than
finding out the phone company actually put it all into a good mutual fund,
which is probably what will happen, groan.)

Oh well, enough. Onwards to poisoned baby's dolls, now there's an abuse!

	-Barry Shein, Boston University