Random Thoughts

April 14, 2004

Email tax would be a great idea

It‘s one of those threats you hear buzzing around the Internet every six months or so. The federal government is threatening to tax our beloved email!
Well, to quote a chap at the top of such things, I say, “Bring it on!“
Personally, I‘d love to see an email tax to help get rid of these Scum of the Earth spammers who have become worse than a flea infestation on a poodle‘s noodle.
Spammers have taken to using jumbled words in the subject line of their messages to avoid junk mail deletion programs. (Like I‘m sure you need me to tell you this if you‘ve got email). A typical message from one “Ashley Dubois“ reads as follows:

Subject: “incombustible osteoporosis haiti dance
Hey,
I wanted to tell you that I just found a place onl¡ne that has the generic version of viagra for a lot cheaper than getting it from a US pharmacy. No prescriptions needed or necessary.“

Naturally, there‘s no way to respond directly to this jerk. No way to screw up Ashley‘s email as a return courtesy, nor any real-world address where one might deliver a rock through her living room window with a polite note attached stating, “Thank you, but we‘ve already received 100 other email offers for generic viagra today and won‘t be needing your thoughtful service.“
And -- hard to imagine -- but the United States managed to land men 240,000 miles away on the moon after only 10 years of effort back in the ‘60s, but Congress can‘t seem to get it together to rid us of friggin‘ email spammers despite the combined pleas of the American people and the Fortune 500. Something to do with that First Amendment free speech thing getting in the way...
But there is ONE way to rid the land of these pests which might help resolve our nation‘s deficit woes all in one fell swoop: Tax email spammers out of existence.
Currently, Microsoft is reportedly working with Yahoo, Inc. on a one-cent email stamp that would be required on bulk mail spammers. Internet conspiracy buffs also periodically circulate rumors that the U.S. Post Office is hatching the same sort of plan to protect its snail mail turf and revenues from encroachment by email. The fear is that the one-cent one email could start out applying to bulk mailers and then be charged to regular folks somewhere down the line.
But I‘d gladly pay a penny stamp or tax for every email I send out if spammers such as “Ashley Dubois“ had to pay the same. On the average, I might need to send out 10 emails per day, so it would cost me one thin dime. But Ashley Dubois and her ilk need to send out hundreds of thousands of messages -- even millions -- and a penny tax on email would hit them hard right where it hurts -- in the wallet.
The charge of a penny per message would have a measurable pain threshold for spammers sending out -- say -- one million messages for their generic viagra, diet pill supplements and penis-stretching products. That would be an extra $10,000 per pop for one million unwanted email messages, bub.
Come to think of it, why isn‘t there a tax on telemarketer calls? A higher tax, say $1 per call, for the pests who make a wreck of every American‘s evening hours.
Small price to pay if you‘ve ever juggled a frying pan with the pasta boiling over and a kid crying when Joe Blow calls with an exciting investment opportunity.
Despite the national Do-Not-Call registry, telemarketers are still a major problem for our country. You laugh? Consider that we now live in a country where no one answers their phone after 5 p.m. for fear it‘s some inconsiderate, intrusive company peddling long distance telephone rates or the like. As a nation, we‘ve been driven to relying on answering machines to take our evening calls because of a plague of telemarketers that even Congress can‘t seem to stop.
Tax these calls and tax them to the bone, please.
It has always seemed unfair to me that whenever government is in a jam with its spending habits, the first recourse seems to be piling on more “sin“ taxes on cigarettes or booze. Cigarette smokers aren‘t sucking on those butts because they like them -- anyone over the age of 18 who smokes is at it because they‘re addicted. This addiction is condoned by our government by way of giving tobacco growers and companies assistance in the way of subsidies, tax breaks and their very existence itself -- something that‘s denied to the heroin or cocaine industry, even though these are less addictive substances than nicotine.
So taxing drug addicts -- ie. smokers -- as a state-sponsored punishment for their “sin“ is morally wrong if government is in collusion with the nicotine pushers.
Instead, we need a national “pest“ tax for email spammers and telemarketers. Maybe this sort of tax incentive would send them a message that hasn‘t been heard through other means: “Get lost.“