In the Fiscal Cliff negotiations, we have heard ad nauseum from the Left about making “The Rich” – the 1% (oops, they now mean 2%) – “pay their fair share” of federal income taxes.
When it comes to the nation’s Internet bandwidth-using 1%, however, many on the Left are demanding the 99% pay for the vast majority of the Elite’s extravagance.
On taxes:
If the ‘Rich’ Are to Pay Their ‘Fair Share,’ They’re Due for a Huge Tax Cut
The wealthiest 1% of the population earns 19% of the income but pays 37% of the income tax. The top 10% of earners pay 68% of the tab.
Bill Gates and I each get one vote – it’s not his fault he earns more money than do I. I don’t want him punished with a tax increase for his mistake of being successful.
Now, let’s look at who uses what percentages of Internet bandwidth.
Top 1% of Mobile Users Consume Half of World’s Bandwidth, and Gap Is Growing
The world’s congested mobile airwaves are being divided in a lopsided manner, with 1 percent of consumers generating half of all traffic.
The top 10 percent of users, meanwhile, are consuming 90 percent of wireless bandwidth.
“The top 1% of data consumers…account for 20% of the overall consumption.”
Sounds a lot like the taxpayer breakdown. Only here these people are consuming – not paying. And here the Left gets decidedly disjointed.
Nearly everywhere on the planet, with nearly all things – if you use more of something, you pay more. You can’t leave the grocery store with ten steaks and pay the same as the guy who left with two.
We in fact already have usage-based pricing in wired and wireless services. You pay more for four hundred cell phone talk minutes than you do for forty. You pay more for four hundred cable channels than you do for forty.
So it would make sense that if you use more Internet bandwidth, you would pay more. You can’t let these 1%-er bandwidth hogs ride on the backs of the 99% – right, Leftists?
Free Press, Public Knowledge Pan FCC Chair’s Usage-Based Pricing Shout-Out
Well that’s confusing. What does the Democrat Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman have to say about it?
(C)hairman (Julius Genachowski) pointed out that…charging more for more bandwidth also meant charging less for less, so it could be consumer-friendly as well as a driver of innovation and consumer choice.
If it’s one-price-fits-all, you have to keep moving the price upward to get closer to covering the 1%. By so doing you price more and more of the 99% out of being able to get any Internet at all.
And why should a grandmother doing little more than emailing her grandchildren have her price hiked ever skyward – to supplement the selfish 1%?
All of this blatant obviousness is lost utterly on the Left.
(Public Knowledge Legal Director Harold) Feld said it was not an issue of only one model, but of whether “all the benefits of broadband Chairman Genachowski has articulated in the past ever happen in a world where broadband providers get a free pass on any pricing scheme or restriction….”
Free Press…Policy Director Matt Wood said that the FCC should be investigating (usage based pricing tiers), not endorsing them.
As rapidly amazing as has been the rise and evolution of the free speech, free market Xanadu that is the World Wide Web – imagine how much (even) better it would be were the purveyors of progress not constantly impeded by Reality-free Leftists.
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