Manteca Bulletin - Cable customers ‘taxed’ by Manteca, satellite users aren’t

A couple of comments in this editorial caught my eye.

Nothing illustrates how we underestimate the huge burden of taxation and regulation than the example of the cable TV provider in town (Comcast) and the proliferation of satellite TV.

Sure, the tax is just a few dollars per person. But it adds up when there are thousands of customers! And what about the regulation? We don’t usually think about regulation costing anything, but it’s not cheap to get city permits, to be authorized as the franchise, comply with all the rules and such.

I don’t have to list the costs. The reason is evident: The taxes and regulations are so burdensome that it was less costly to launch a complex scientific device into geo-stationary orbit above the Earth than to pay the taxes and deal with the regulatory hurdles governments put between them and their customers! Not to mention the costs of the receivers in each home capable of decoding signals from outer space.

And the editor bemoans how “unfair” it is that the genius innovators at the satellite TV company “don’t have to pay the cable tax.” Duh! They invented a way to distribute their content without cables. No cables, no tax.

Manteca Bulletin - Cable customers ‘taxed’ by Manteca, satellite users aren’t

p.s. The first person who suggests that the taxation was good because it spurred on innovation will get 20 lashes with the Milton Friedman noodle.