New tax idea: The stupid company tax
: Mobilcom just wrote off the $10 billion it spent on its 3G mobile phone license. The German government alone raised $50 billion from such stupid phone companies in the midst of the mobile bubble (an aneurism formed off the tech bubble). Greed meets stupidity, always a good combination.
Now if this hadn’t cost too damned much and essentially ruined the telecommunications industry, then maybe there would actually be real development going on with 3G that would create new jobs and new services and new wealth and new taxes. Instead, this government enriched itself at the expense of shareholders and employees and customers and the future.
: See, too, this story in the NY Times that says that high prices will hold back deployment of broadband in the U.S. — and all the great services and thus sales, revenue, jobs, and taxes that come with it — while in other countries, governments are helping subsidize and encourage its deployment and thus these nations are already ahead of us (and their next generation will be more technical than ours). Our government is too busy giving tax cuts in the midst of an economic downturn and deficit spending and war to invest in the future.
