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Postpone the Digital Conversion |
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Anyone who watches TV with any regularity is well aware of the commercials that have been warning US citizens that according to Congressional mandate, all TV broadcasting will switch over to digital on February 17. Each ad has made it clear that those who have analog sets can receive a voucher to pay for a converter box. Apparently, the government wasn’t paying attention to their own ads. They have been caught with their pants down and have run out of money for the vouchers:
The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s TV Converter Box Coupon Program, with a US$1.3 billion budget from Congress, has been depleted, the NTIA announced. Starting last Sunday, U.S. residents applying for a digital TV converter box voucher were put on a waiting list, the agency said. As of Monday, residents of about 24 million U.S. households have applied for 46 million converter box coupons, the NTIA said. Households can ask for two $40 coupons, and the coupons expire 90 days after they are mailed out.
This stinks in more ways than one. First, the whole program seems like a giveaway to the telecoms, who will end up receiving all of this government money. Second, and more importantly, it is a social justice issue that ostracizes some of the most vulnerable members of our society.
Those who still receive their television through analog antennas are by and the large the poor, the elderly, and those who live in rural areas. Television is an important source of news, weather, and emergency information - as well as our chief provider of social and cultural contact to the larger society. After all, how many of us witnessed Obama’s historic victory by watching the Grant Park celebration on TV? What if we had been denied that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because of a mistake such as the one that has been made with this voucher program? To cut a sizable portion of the population off like this would be yet another indication that the government no longer works for the people.
There is only one solution to this dilemma: postpone the transition. Congress is in session now, and should act swiftly to move back the February 17 deadline and to provide enough funding for the program to get converter boxes to everyone who needs it. It shouldn’t be that difficult to do, and it will make a lot of constituents happy.
I have noticed the conversion boxes which contain technology that should cost no more than about $10 have always been priced in stores at pretty much exactly the coupon price or $10 more.
As soon as those coupons are gone the price of those conversion boxes will fall to probably $10 to $20 bucks.
When will government learn that all subsidies should only pay a percentage of the subsidized item’s cost so the products maker is forced to keep prices lower instead of keeping them artificially higher.
This happens with college tuition - guaranteed student loan limits directly increase prices of tuition as they rise. Solar panel subsidies directly keep solar panels at a higher price.
On and on.
Price subsidies help keep the prices higher and don’t necessarily decrease the net cost to the consumer.
The government should have issued magnetic stripe cards that would be run at the cash register and would instantly rebate via charging to the government a fixed percentage of the price of the item at the register up to a maximum limit of the coupon.