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From an economics perspective, taxing the airwaves is just as efficient as a land-value tax. The market response to something being taxed is to not make as much
by ThrustVectoring 10y ago
From an economics perspective, taxing the airwaves is just as efficient as a land-value tax. The market response to something being taxed is to not make as much of it. As long as the tax is set such that the land or spectrum is still worth using, it's the closest thing to a free lunch.
And it's not as if taxing the spectrum changes how much more money cell phone companies would get at different prices.
- davidf18 10y agoIt is in the best interest of the government to make the key resource of cellular Wi-Fi as cheap as possible to encourage use just as it is with wire-line internet providers. When Google Fiber comes to a city, the prices of competitors drop and the data speeds increase. The spectrum auction which is passed on as an invisible tax creates the opposite effect of that desire. It is an essential resource in today's world, so this tax is not only implicit and invisible, it is also regressive, adversely affecting the poorest the most. > And it's not as if taxing the spectrum changes how much more money cell phone companies would get at different prices. Actually, cell phone providers could make more revenues through increased use of spectrum at lower prices. Consumer, cell phone provider both win when there is no auction and the spectrum is given out as it originally was in the US with radio and TV spectrum.