Commonly known by their pseudonym "Obama phones." We tend to look at the people that get them, but I always like to look behind the curtain at who is making the money off of these kinds of programs. As it turns out, it's simply another way that the fat cats use the taxpayer/working class to fund their fortunes.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/26/tech...e-free-phones/
"The subsidy is from a government-created program called Lifeline, which is paid for by customer fees on most phone bills. The program is overseen by the Federal Communications Commission, and has its roots in a universal access initiative that began in 1985, during Ronald Reagan's administration."
"Where does the money for Lifeline subsidy come from? You.
Take a look at your phone bill and you'll see a charge -- typically a few dollars a month -- for payments to the "Universal Service Fund." That's the umbrella program covering various ventures, including Lifeline, that are designed to make telephone communications universally available to all Americans."
"Those tactics are paying off. Tracfone now has more than has more than 4 million subscribers in its Lifeline program, called SafeLink, and collected $452 million last year from the program's subsidies. That's twice what it took in two years ago, and far more than any other provider. (The runners-up, AT&T (T)and Sprint (S), each collected around $274 million.)
The Lifeline cash is a substantial chunk of the $3.8 billion Tracfone generated last year in annual sales. The company is the American subsidiary of América Móvil, the Mexican telecom giant run by Carlos Slim, the world's richest billionaire."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Slim
"Carlos Slim Helú (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈkaɾlos esˈlim eˈlu]; born January 28, 1940) is a Mexican business magnate, investor, and philanthropist.[3][4] From 2010 to 2013, Slim was ranked as therichest person in the world.[5] Known as the "Warren Buffett of Mexico",[6][7][8][9][10] he derived his fortune from his extensive holdings in a considerable number of Mexican companies through his conglomerate, Grupo Carso.[11] As of 3 November 2015 he was #2 on Forbes list of billionaires, with net worth estimated at US$77.1 billion."
"Slim is the chairman and chief executive of telecommunications companies Telmex and América Móvil, Latin America's largest mobile-phone carrier, which accounted for around $49 billion of Slim's wealth by the end of 2010."
I'm Carlos Slim, and I'd like to thank Ronald Reagan and the shit kicking US taxpayers for making me filthy RICH!
* Disclaimer:
(I don't hate rich people, I simply like to know where they get their money, especially when they tell me it's done through hard work, and pulling themselves up by their boot straps, but then it turns out that it's from taxpayer subsidies.)
Comment