powersurge said:
Since the beginning, our taxes were collected from all citizens so as to provide the national infrastructure,... and it has worked. We are paying too many taxes every year, for every service that used to be free. Phone, cell phone, light, water, tv, internet, mail.. ad infinitum.. We do not need people offering to add more ways for the government to control us..
Nothing is free, somebody pays for it. One way or another.
Phone tax to provide service to rural areas used to be done by having a single company handle nearly all phones. Profit for a single phone company is maximized when as many people as possible have phones. Great... Sort of... Well, not really. And the Bell system was fairly well behaved for a monopoly. Some of extra profits (meaning higher phone bills paid by consumers) went into research at Bell Labs, which eventually did pay a return in improved technology. Yet the customers paid for this, and more. The phone company didn't have to care, and didn't. Unlike a government, you can't vote the phone company out, unless the government breaks up the phone company, which it eventually did. With multiple phone companies, profit is maximized if someone else provides service to high cost rural areas. So now we pay a tax to subsidize phone service to rural voters. The alternative would would be very high cost or no service for rural areas. If you minimize government, you give power to corporations that you can't vote out of office. Corporations are very willing to control you in ways that government wouldn't be allowed to as any government that tried such would be voted out.
So which would you really prefer? A fairly small tax, or a much larger total phone bill? A phone company that doesn't have to care or a government that had better care or will lose the next election?