Obama already created a programs for mobile phones. I have a friend who got a free smart phone from the federal government. It was android and could load Venmo and other apps.
And he got a lot of flak for it too, "Obama phones" as a four letter word early in his administration.
With good reason - a lot of people were hurting in the recession and watching the government pay for smart phones for lazy good-for-nothings must have been incredibly frustrating. If the government stopped favoring the unwilling to work over the down-on-their-luck, we may have a less toxic political culture.
If you keep posting flamebait to HN we will ban you.
The whole point of distributing money instead of goods is that the goods people want change over time, and large bureaucracies are slow to react to those changes. 30 years from now, people won’t want cell phones. They’ll want whatever new technology we use to communicate.
Free mobile phones for the indigent (with data) are already available in CA.
no, you can buy a phone with the $1000/month dividend