SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Dori: Durkan wants you to pay for low-income families to have free internet
Mar 5, 2019, 1:52 PM
(Mingret/FreeImages)
(Mingret/FreeImages)
According to a MyNorthwest story, a new study from the City of Seattle revealed that 95 percent of households have internet access in the home. But people living in low-income communities are five to seven times more likely than the average citizen to not have internet access.
Jenny Durkan says that this is a “race and social justice issue.” According to her, the City of Seattle should spend a fortune in tax dollars to lead the way in “digital inclusion.” She wants the taxpayers to fund everyone’s internet access.
Why? It’s because the government needs to take care of everybody, and that will raise people’s self-esteem, and then they’ll be at the same level as everyone else.
The 1960s/1970s version of no internet access was when every single one of my friends growing up had a color TV. I loved going to my friends’ houses to watch their color TV. All we had was a 19-inch black-and-white TV. It was awful. What was the solution? Should the government have bought us a color TV?
No. The solution, as I figured out many years later, was that if I wanted something, I had to go work for it. So I started working at age 12 at Foodtown in Sunset Hill. And I’ve had a job ever since then, because I knew that it was the only way I was going to get the stuff that I wanted.
Do you know what we should do to all the families that don’t have internet access? We should tell them to get part-time jobs. There are lots of part-time jobs out there; it’s a great economy for job-seekers. Working 20 hours a week at fast food in Seattle will get you $15 an hour, or $1,000 a month take-home.
If your full-time job doesn’t let you get internet, then get a part-time job on top of it. If your kids want internet and they’re old enough to work, let them find a 20-hour job at a store or restaurant. But instead, the government is taxing other people to get you internet.
Want another solution? Go to the library. There is free internet for everyone at the library. I give a couple hundred bucks a year to the library in my property taxes.
What we’re seeing is a nanny state. The government is making sure it enhances your self-esteem, is teaching you in pre-K that gender is fluid and that the Earth will end in 12 years if your parents drive a pickup truck, and if you don’t have internet, well, the government will tax someone else to get it for you. The government will take care of your every need.
No. That system does not work. We’ve got to start empowering our kids. We’ve got to teach them the merits and the nobility of working for what you want and achieving it yourself.
We are going in the wrong direction, whether we’re talking about drugs on the streets of Seattle or free internet for all. The more government has decided that it will make everything bubble-wrapped for us, the more we can’t cope when it’s time to go out in the world on our own.
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