Link: FCC Raises Record $19.6 Billion In Auction of Wireless Airwaves - washingtonpost.com.
Why do we sell off assets that rightly belong to "we the people," and which could earn us a growing income? When will we claim the economic value of these assets as belonging to the American people, not subject to permanent privatization by anyone?
But of course there is another way to collect back that annual value: Tax it! Treat it as ours, not subject to privatization.
We ought to be looking for ways to finance this war, and finance all the rest of our current spending, instead of shifting the expense to our children and grandchildren. One of the very logical ways would be to start to tax not the income that corporations earn from putting spectrum to good use, but the value of the spectrum itself.
None of those corporations "invented" electromagnetic spectrum, any more than the owner of a choice block in Manhattan created that land.
There is nothing unjust about requiring them to pay for what they take. Broadcast spectrum is a scarce and valuable resource, and those who claim bits of it as their own owe us. Will a few of them decide that they are making suboptimal use of it, if they have to pay its real worth? Perhaps. And that will make room for an entrepreneur who will put it to optimal use. Let's not tax their profits. Just require them to pay for what they take.
And we should be electing people who see it that way. It may not come naturally to those who depend on raising large amounts of campaign money (much of which goes to paying for broadcast advertising, lining the pockets of those who currently own our airwaves, and are currently not asked to pay annual rent to the commons for it.
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