Dozens of California cities are colluding to find a way to tax streaming video services such as Netflix. The argument is that cities have declining revenues and also you pay a tax on video coming over cable services, so you should also pay a tax on video coming through the Internet. They want to go after Hulu, Pandora and similar venues as well.
When is the last time you heard of a city, county or state saying, "Revenues are down, so we have to cut expenses?"
It is a proven economic principle that the more you tax, the less you collect... simply because people spend less and there are therefore fewer dollars rolling around the system to tax. You cannot tax people into oblivion; it just doesn't work. But, as long as we allow our governments to spend and tax at will, they will continue to do so. And when the really bad rainy day comes, we're all going to be up the well-known creek.
It's called "runaway spending" and it has to stop now. We'll be the ones to blame if we don't make it happen.
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