Hey, Wired President. You Wouldn't Tax the Internet, the Cell Phone or the Tweet. Would You?

ZDnet ^ | April 29th, 2009 | Tom Steinert-Threlkeld

[plsjr]

"Maybe it’s just me (and my wife).

"We still put spare change into a piggy bank (a red pig, actually), as we go. Pays for a nice dinner, every now and then.

"So it floors me, still, when I see the dimensions of the federal budget and how we pay (or don’t) for what we do.

"Check this, but the federal budget is now $3.5 trillion. Okay. But the deficit is … $1.7 trillion?

"This means our federal government only pays for half of what it spends by taxing you and I for it. The rest has got to be borrowed.

"That’s not going to keep up. China is already making noises about not buying more Treasury notes. And, why do I not believe that President Obama is going to be able to bring down the deficit as fast as he hopes and/or projects?

"Doesn’t matter. The real worry is what happens when the crunch comes and our Wired President decides he’s got to find new sources of revenue to make ends meet."

[plsjr]

I think this is the first time I've seen an 'apolitical' tech pub put up something that should get their folks concerned about personal cash-flow.

Unsurprisingly, many back-talkers see benefits in new taxes ("let them tax email - it'll get rid of spam!"), others claim not to be promoting socialism but spout typical leftist class warfare, railing against "big business' need to pay their fair share", claiming that tax reductions never reduced the deficit.

It hurts to know we're all going to suffer because so many have been indoctrinated.

[aft_lizard]

Postage would not stop spam, it will stop only if you either block foreign email ip’s completely or have a world wide agreement on charging postage.

[plsjr]

That’s my point - many of the comments are from the clueless.