The cable companies are diverting money that is intended to improve infrastructure into a black hole, creating a perpetual cash machine for greedy execs. When cable television subscribers open their monthly bills they will not see a charge for the “Social Contract.”
Since the mid-1990s, it appears that every cable subscriber has shelled out $1 per month increasing to $5 a month by 2000 to subsidize cable companies’ system upgrades. There has been no accounting for the total monies raised through this subsidy nor a thorough assessment of whether the cable operators fulfilled the system upgrades (including wiring and services to public institutions) the subsidy is suppose to underwrite.
We estimate that the total Social Contract or “social con” ripoff has cost American cable subscribers $46 billion. But the true costs of the social con could be much higher, as the cable companies may have “double billed” on their construction upgrades.
These new construction payments underwrote cable operators implementing multiple revenue streams and a monopoly on their wires. This helped cable companies to now offer broadband, Internet, telephone and other services.
CBS News’s “60 Minutes” segment highlighting men deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison will air Sunday...
