Re: Scope of Universal Service

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When I was a kid (farm in Nebraska), our refrigerator door had
a clipped comment, attributed to 'an old Indian' that describes
this perfectly:

Like a blood transfusion taken out of one arm and put back
into the other.  And with the government running it, half gets
lost along the way.
 
[Moderator's Note:  This raises an interesting question, namely
the adminstrative cost of the present Universal Service fund.
I had assumed that, because of its simple circular nature, the
present fund is probably efficient to adminster, but I haven't
seen any figures on this.  I gather from the on-line comments
that the National Exchange Carrier Association has the present
contract for this activity, and that it's not directly carried
out by the government.  A definite worry with a Universal Service
which would be much broader than the present one is that it could
be very difficult and expensive to administer, which would
certainly act to undercut its intended purpose.]

> "businesses" pay the subsidy.  If the flow of funds is "circular", it
> is a long loop running from one set of consumers to another with some
> overlap.  Companies and businesses in the loop are only tax
> collectors;  collecting at the behest of government from one set of
> consumers in prices and distributing to others in subsidies.  Once

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