It’s Not Just in Your Head, the Web Is Slowing Down

It’s Not Just in Your Head, the Web Is Slowing Down

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By Millie Dent

It’s not your imagination, and it’s not because AT&T — and possibly others — is purposefully cutting speeds to unlimited data plan users. The Internet is slowing down. The reason: Websites are growing in size, causing slower load times.

The average website is now 2.1 MB in size, compared to 1.5 MB two years ago, according to HTTP Archive, an Internet data measurement company. Multiple reasons can explain this increase in size.

Sites have been adding more content in an effort to drum up traffic, such as videos, engaging images, interactive plug-ins (comments and feeds) and other code and script-heavy features. Websites are becoming more and more technically advanced, and other sites have to keep adding features to stay competitive.

To keep up with the rapidly increasing number of users accessing sites on various platforms, developers are offering more versions of websites as well as apps to accommodate all devices, including smartphones, watches, tablets, and other gadgets. All of these versions require additional code, ultimately adding to the weight of a given website.

Then there are the advertisers who want to get the user’s attention by creating dramatic displays for their products that consume even more bandwidth.

Websites also want to know who is visiting their pages, both welcome and unwelcome visitors. New tools that track and analyze visitors have increased in popularity, as well as stronger encryption technology to add more security. These security measures and trackers require more code, again slowing load times.

Unfortunately for websites trying to keep up with the times, Google has just introduced a new ‘Slow to Load’ warning sign in mobile search results. Since mobile searches account for more than half of the total Google searches in 10 countries, Google wants to enhance user experience for those on their mobile platform.

Although the weight of a website isn’t all that contributes to slow loading, it’s a major factor. Other reasons include users overusing data, a poor connection, or a high level of traffic in the mobile network.

Google also changed its algorithm in April, so now ‘mobile friendly’ sites are ranked higher on search results, while those that fail to meet its criteria are ranked lower.

Although the internet is only slowing by a matter of seconds, it’s still slowing down. All the more reason for a user to become frustrated with a page that’s taking a couple extra seconds to load and go to a competitor’s site.

Chart of the Day: High Deductible Blues

By The Fiscal Times Staff

The higher the deductible in your health insurance plan, the less happy you probably are with it. That’s according to a new report on employer-sponsored health insurance from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Los Angeles Times.

Chart of the Day: Tax Cuts and the Missing Capex Boom

Construction cranes tower over the base of the 30 Hudson Yards building, Wells Fargo & Co.'s future offices in New York
REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
By The Fiscal Times Staff

Despite the Republican tax overhaul, businesses aren’t significantly increasing their capital expenditures. “The federal government will have to borrow an added $1 trillion through 2027 to pay for the corporate tax breaks,” says Bloomberg’s Mark Whitehouse. “So far, it’s hard to see what the country is getting in return.”

Chart of the Day: 2019’s Lobbying Leaders

Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
By The Fiscal Times Staff

Roll Call reports that trade, infrastructure and health care issues including prescription drug prices “dominated the lobbying agendas of some of the biggest spenders on K Street early this year.” Here’s Roll Call’s look at the top lobbying spenders so far this year: 

Can You Fix Social Security? A New Tool Lets You Try

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By The Fiscal Times Staff

The Congressional Budget Office released an interactive tool Wednesday that shows how some widely discussed policy changes would affect the long-run financial health of the Social Security system.

“This interactive tool allows the user to explore seven policy options that could be used to improve the Social Security program’s finances and delay the trust funds’ exhaustion,” CBO said. “Four options would reduce benefits, and three options would increase payroll taxes. The tool allows for any combination of those options. It also lets the user change implementation dates and choose whether to show scheduled or payable benefits. … The tool also shows the impact of the options on different groups of people.”

Click here to view the interactive tool on the CBO website.

Why Prescription Drug Prices Keep Rising – and 3 Ways to Bring Them Down

Consumers are sounding off about the downside of generic drugs
Abid Katib/Getty Images
By Michael Rainey

Prescription drug prices have been rising at a blistering rate over the last few decades. Between 1980 and 2016, overall spending on prescription drugs rose from about $12 billion to roughly $330 billion, while its share of total health care spending doubled, from 5% to 10%.

Although lawmakers have shown renewed interest in addressing the problem, with pharmaceutical CEOs testifying before the Senate Finance Committee in February and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMS) scheduled to do so this week, no comprehensive plan to halt the relentless increase in prices has been proposed, let alone agreed upon.

Robin Feldman, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law, takes a look at the drug pricing system in a new book, “Drugs, Money and Secret Handshakes: The Unstoppable Growth of Prescription Drug Prices.” In a recent conversation with Bloomberg’s Joe Nocera, Feldman said that one of the key drivers of rising prices is the ongoing effort of pharmaceutical companies to maintain control of the market.

Fearing competition from lower-cost generics, drugmakers began over the last 10 or 15 years to focus on innovations “outside of the lab,” Feldman said. These innovations include paying PBMs to reduce competition from generics; creating complex systems of rebates to PBMs, hospitals and doctors to maintain high prices; and gaming the patent system to extend monopoly pricing power.

Feldman’s research on the dynamics of the drug market led her to formulate three general solutions for the problem of ever-rising prices:

1) Transparency: The current system thrives on secret deals between drug companies and middlemen. Transparency “lets competitors figure out how to compete and it lets regulators see where the bad behaviors occur,” Feldman says.

2) Patent limitations: Drugmakers have become experts at extending patents on existing drugs, often by making minor modifications in formulation, dosage or delivery. Feldman says that 78% of drugs getting new patents are actually old drugs gaining another round of protection, and thus another round of production and pricing exclusivity. A “one-and-done” patent system would eliminate this increasingly common strategy.

3) Simplification: Feldman says that “complexity breeds opportunity,” and warns that the U.S. “drug price system is so complex that the gaming opportunities are endless.” While “ruthless simplification” of regulatory rules and approval systems could help eliminate some of those opportunities, Feldman says that the U.S. doesn’t seem to be moving in this direction.

Read the full interview at Bloomberg News