The Best Investment Cities Can Make (and New York's Already Doing It)

by Gijs van Wulfen, Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140513064204-206580-free-wifi-for-everybody-as-new-york-will-have-soon

Internet access is always a big annoyance to me while traveling.

On a business trip I need to check my email and write my LinkedIn posts.

On a holiday trip with the family, including two teenagers, internet access is essential to keep the peace.

At those moments I am really pissed off when hotels charge you ridiculous fees for internet access per day (and sometimes even per device). It makes me feel exploited, because they know you can't do without.

So that's when I go out to find a Starbucks, McDonalds or local lunch cafe, which provides me with free wifi, having my fingers crossed the connection is up to speed.

That's why I loved to read that New York City wants to build one of the largest public wifi networks. The request for proposals was announced on May 1, looking for the installation, operation, and maintenance of up to 10,000 hotspots. It will be ready in four years.

Wikipedia reports free wifi is available in some way across 150 cities in the world like: Bangkok (Thailand), Blackpool (UK), Helsingborg (Sweden), Toronto (Canada), Denver (USA), Guadalajara (Mexico) and Stellenbosch (SA). Business Insider report 9 cities with the best free wifi among which are Helsinki (Finland), Taipei (Taiwan) and Hong Kong (China).

In the Netherlands there is a start-up, planning to build free wifi-networks in 38 cities, costing €10 million. It was launched last year in Tiel, a small city of 41,000 citizens.

At the moment, 16,000 unique visitors in Tiel use the free wifi for 20,000 hours per week. Other cities like Leiden (115,000 citizens) and Zwolle (120,000 citizens) are offering free wifi in The Netherlands too. And more will follow soon.

Cities offering free wifi is an excellent idea!

Free wifi makes cities attractive. Both tourists and citizens will benefit from free internet access. Free wifi will promote cities as being cool and accessible. It will make tourists and people from out of town stop at your restaurants, shop in your stores and visit your museums.

It will connect everybody in your community, giving them access to information. Having every visitor and citizen connected will bring all kinds of new commercial opportunities too for local stores, museums, schools, restaurants, hotels and events.

Offering free wifi is perfect city marketing

I'd like to appeal to city councils to promote free wifi for everybody. Why? Free wifi is perfect city marketing. It's innovative too. Wikipedia reports there are only around 150 cities offering free wifi out of around 40,000 cities in the world. So offering free wifi on short term will make your city innovative.

Do I want free wifi always? Well, perhaps not on a quiet holiday, but that's a matter of finding the off-switch of your devices isn't it? I probably won't spend a quiet holiday in the city anyway.

Looking forward to coming to the NYC again, this time with free wifi. I hope a lot of other cities will follow NYC's example soon.

The Commission of Audit Wants to Rip Up Australia's Social Contract

by Veronica Sheen, Monash University

The recommendations in the Commission of Audit’s report, which was released yesterday, would, if implemented, erode the fundamental building blocks of Australia’s social contract.

The social contract - the suite of policies, legislation, programs, health care and social services - has served to ensure that every Australian is able to have a basic but decent standard of living.

It has been carefully crafted over the 20th century since Federation.

The social contract has also served to ensure that extremes of poverty and inequality have been largely avoided, with some important exceptions.

Growth of the working poor

The Commission of Audit believes that the minimum wage should be set at 44% of average weekly earnings (AWE), which is a measure of average earnings across both part-time and full-time employment.

Using AWE as a benchmark, rather than full-time average earnings, significantly erodes the value of the minimum wage because it includes the wage of people who are either underemployed (around 7% of the Australian workforce) or who choose to work in part-time jobs.

If the Commission of Audit’s recommendation is implemented, the current minimum wage of A$622.20 per week would be reduced to A$488.90 per week.

Of great concern would be its effect on people in part-time, casual jobs. It would reduce the current hourly rate of $16.37 to $12.80 per hour (plus a casual loading). For many people, including the 10% of the female workforce that is underemployed, this would be a large loss of income.

The recommendation on the minimum wage would shift the foundation of adequacy in wage setting as enshrined in the 1907 Harvester Judgment. It would take us down the track of an American-style working poor with all the negative social and economic consequences for society.

Big holes in the social safety net

The recommendation for reducing the minimum wage also needs to be set in the context of recommendations across the income-support system. There was no attempt to address the low level of unemployment payments in the form of the Newstart Allowance.

However, the Commission of Audit wants to make life harder for people forced to live on these low payments. Currently, earned income between $100 and $250 per fortnight reduces fortnightly payment by 50 cents in the dollar. The Commission of Audit recommendation means it would be reduced by 75 cents in the dollar.

This undermines efforts of people to sustain themselves while on low Newstart payments through a small amount of part-time work. This new taper rate would apply across the board to all benefits and pensions.

If implemented, the recommendation means that there will be a greater disincentive for people to take on any work as it will be more trouble than what it’s worth.

It is exactly counter to the type of help a government would want to give people to get off income-support payments. It erodes people’s capacity to help themselves through paid work and will increase poverty. It could also extend participation in the grey or black economy.

The recommendation that young people on unemployment payments will eventually be required to move to areas with higher employment opportunities sounds like a bit of nasty social engineering.

Historically, young people have moved to areas with greater opportunities and they don’t need a government regulation to do so. But they do need jobs with decent wages to go to.

A squeeze on age pensions

The change to indexing arrangements in the age pension, as recommended by the Commission of Audit, will erode the pension’s value if implemented. The current arrangements ensure a modest but adequate standard of living for Australia’s older population.

The erosion of adequacy sets the ground for the pauperisation of some groups of older people, especially single women (a group highly reliant on the full age pension) and those in rental accommodation.

There is a case for high-value housing to be included in the assets test. However, there would need to be a very careful assessment of the level at which this is set.

The Commission of Audit also recommends raising the pension eligibility age to 70 to take effect by 2053, linking the pension eligibility age to life expectancy. This long lead time is better than a transition as early as 2030 as some reports suggested.

However, other factors still need to be taken into account, particularly the health status of workers in occupational and industry sectors where working to 70 will be very difficult to achieve.

Altogether, the recommendations across social welfare would create big holes in the Australian social safety net - one that has been carefully crafted since Federation. The fact that Australia has a well-targeted and efficient social welfare system is entirely overlooked.

The Commission of Audit, chaired by Tony Shepherd, ignored that Australia has a well-targeted and efficient social welfare system. AAP/Lukas Coch

The end of universal health coverage

The Commission of Audit recommendations on Medicare would fundamentally change the basis of our universal, publicly funded health system. The recommended GP co-payments are large at $15 and would be very hard on low-income earners. If implemented, this would undermine one of Medicare’s chief goals: to ensure everyone could see a doctor when they needed to.

However, it is also alarming that the Commission of Audit thinks that the well-off should be entirely out of Medicare for basic health services and should pay for them through the private system.

This recommendation would lead to Australia having a dual health-care system - one for the well-off and one for everyone else. This sets up the conditions for the higher-income groups to continually contest expenditures on a health system that they do not have access to themselves.

This is why a universal system works so well. It ensures social solidarity on the provision of health care. The Commission of Audit’s recommendation has the potential to set up the type of inequalities in health care combined with the exorbitant costs of the system that we see in the US.

Conclusions

The Commission of Audit has made much of the affordability of Australia’s core areas of social spending.

But it might also have considered whether Australia can afford to rip up its long-standing social commitments on decent wages, an adequate social safety net and a universal health-care system. The costs of many of its recommendations may ultimately be too high.


Veronica Sheen does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.