MessageInteresting, Arthur. Is the idea of a bit tax gaining any real acceptance?
Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Arthur Cordell To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION' ; [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 9:34 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] McKinsey Quarterly article: Measuring thevalue ofsearch COLUMN: Can a bit tax bring a New Wealth of Nations? By Ottawa Business Journal Staff <mailto:[email protected]> Sun, Dec 29, 2002 11:00 PM EST At a rough guess, the public sector needs another $20 billion a year to meet the pressing needs of health, education and defence, and to renew the crumbling infrastructure that carries our traffic, carries off our sewage, delivers our water and provides many other essential services. Maybe $30 billion. A lot, anyway. Where's it going to come from? Increased income tax? This isn't a very desirable option, either for the taxpayer or for the economy, which has to maintain some semblance of equilibrium with low tax competitors, such as the United States of Affluence. A jump in GST from seven per cent to double digits? Not a big favourite among politicians, who would find themselves en masse back in the private sector the first election following such a move. There's no painless way to raise the needed funds. Or is there? One way that has the advantage of being scarcely visible has been suggested by my friend Arthur Cordell, an advisor to Industry Canada and originator many years thence of the "conserver society" tagline, precursor to "sustainable development." His more recent contribution to socio-economic discourse has been the notion of the "bit tax." "The new wealth of nations," Arthur points out, "is found in the trillions of digital bits of information pulsing through global networks. These are the physical/electronic manifestations of the many transactions, conversations, voice and video messages and programs that taken together record the process of production, distribution and consumption in the new economy." If there's a new economy, there should be a new tax base. To follow the information highway analogy, it would be similar to a gasoline tax, or a toll on bridges or highways. Why not tax digital traffic, asks Arthur? "Whether the digital bit is part of a foreign exchange transaction, or a business teleconference, check clearance information, or an ATM transaction, each bit is a physical manifestation of the new economy at work. So let's imagine a 'bit tax.' Automatically metered, it will cause fewer collection problems than most other direct or indirect taxes. Collected by the telecom carriers, satellite networks and cable systems, revenues would flow directly to the revenue service of the respective country." There are a lot of questions to be answered, of course. Is a bit tax progressive or regressive? Will it be absorbed by the carriers or passed on to consumers? Should lower rates apply to some heavy traffic items such as digital movies downloaded to the home? Can one nation bring in a bit tax or does it require international collaboration? The design of the Internet makes it impossible to determine where someone making an electronic purchase is located. With a typical mail-order purchase, the product is shipped somewhere. But if the information is downloaded from an Internet site, the seller may have no idea of its destination. And where does the merchant reside? Where he or she actually has an office or where the computer server is? It would seem that international cooperation will be essential to collecting and distributing a bit tax, which should give considerable comfort to the vanguard of the world government movement. As Arthur says, "The point is to begin a discussion on the sort of new taxes appropriate for a new economy. A bit tax can lead to the monetization of all productivity. One result: economic growth numbers will more accurately reflect the productivity advances brought by information technologies. With monetization will come higher gross domestic product and higher revenues to be used in a variety of ways. "New revenues can be used for schools, parks, health care, to re-train some for new jobs and, for those who cannot be retrained to provide a continuing flow of income that allows displaced workers to maintain their dignity - and purchasing power - in the new economy. This last point is important since purchasing power is needed to maintain effective demand in our economies if we are to avoid chronic economic recessions or worse. "The bit tax may be one way to more fully distribute the benefits of the new economy. One way for the productive power of information technology to bring with it a New Wealth of Nations." From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of michael gurstein Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 9:09 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] McKinsey Quarterly article: Measuring the value ofsearch Measuring the value of Internet search Although the word "Google" has evolved from the name of an Internet search company into a verb understood almost everywhere on Earth, the economic value of Web searches has long remained a mystery, approached through inexact or tainted metrics such as the number of searches undertaken or ad revenues reported by search companies themselves. A new McKinsey study takes a wider view. For a truer reckoning of the way the Web turns our curiosity into a powerful economic force, read "Measuring the value of search." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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