Posted on 03/08/2013 10:30:34 AM PST by Olog-hai
Earlier this week, readers reacted with skepticism after Berkeley City Councilman Gordon Wozniak suggested that taxing email might be one way to raise money for the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service. …
But there’s a history to this idea, however outlandish as it might sound to some.
The United Nations Development Program examined such a tax in its 1999 Human Development Report, Globalization With a Human Face, as a way to fund “the global communications revolution.” UNDP calculated that in 1996, such a tax would have raised $70 billion globally.
The New York Times took a brief look at the concept in 2009. Summing up an opinion piece by lawyer Edward Gottesman in the British magazine Prospect (behind a paywall), The Times said Gottesman thought such a tax could be used “to finance the expansion of bandwidth that the Web desperately needs.” He had suggested charging “a few cents per e-mail to cut down on the estimated 90 percent of it that is unwanted spam.” …
(Excerpt) Read more at berkeleyside.com ...
This would be roundly defeated by technology workarounds including VPN, other current messaging technologies and as-yet-uninvented ones.
The postal service is supposed to be a SERVICE, not another perpetual Goobermint cancer that must be supported for eternity.
Chickenshit is what it is. Not even worthy of being called bullshit.
How about speech tax?
Hail Obama = free.
Less Abortion = $50
G*d d*mn Obama = $10.000
And so on.
Or better yet tax all internet users including smart phones with data packages and website servers by the byte that they transmit out of their computers onto the internet,
This guy is a thinker for sure. Does he know that the internet is world wide?
I was peed when they told free (non-profit) online radio station that they must run ads or charge user fees to pay music royalties to the song owners.
I am sure that this idea will go places...
Fixed it.
What America REALLY needs is a politician tax. Tax the **** out of EVERY ONE OF THEM!
I guess it takes a California Liberal to take an urban legend that’s been floating around in cyberspace for nearly two decades and try to turn it into a law.
They they would be delivering some real value for the money they received.
Seems way back we could have created an automobile tax to help support the languishing horse and buggy makers...
Every time Obama says “I” in a speech, everyone who makes over $1,000,000 a year throws 5 bucks into the pot.
Like taxing car sales in order to keep the horse stables operating.
The Beatles song Taxman comes to mind.
Will we ever be rid of these blood-sucking parasites?
The second most famous internet hoax...and they want to do it for real. Geesh.
I remember when the US Postal Service asserted that if you wanted to stay on the right side of the law you should affix a canceled first-class stamp to anything you wanted to fax.
Just tax talking and be done with it.
I have had this same thought
There is no way short of insanely draconian surveillance measures to implement an email tax. Anyone can operate their own email server.
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