<sigh>
How many people don't get it? Are they all reporters, or are there some real people who are missing this too...
Ok, I know that when telephones were new (and I'd wager I don't have any readers who remember that), that the 'telephone culture' was treated as some new, different thing that no one understood. But really, we've had a couple of chances now to figure out what that means...
In
this story, Computerworld reports on the fact that the National Retail Federation supports taxes on 'net commerce', "as long as there would be a sales tax in that local jurisdiction anyway".
In a release, the world's largest retail association took pains to
stress that it's not calling for new taxes, but rather equal taxes
regardless of sales channel.
This, of course, will be the cover story on next month's issue of Duh magazine.
I don't know how they do it elsewhere, but I'd be surprised to find that any other taxing jurisdiction has a different approach than that here in Florida: if you didn't pay sales tax on your purchase, you -- legally -- owe a 'Use' tax to the State on the same amount of money.
That vanishingly few people actually _pay_ this tax is a) not surprising, and b) not my fault. The problem here is that the state doesn't want to admit that the Emperor is naked. If they admit that they should already be getting this tax revenue, then they have to take the rap for being unable to collect it.
This will never do.
On a related rant, I'm hearing lots of people (finally!) start complaining about "online privacy".
Guess what, folks?
Your lack of privacy hasn't changed -- it's just that you can finally see the problem, because you're online yourselves now.
There are, admittedly, more things that you do now to be exposed, but the amount to which those things are exposed it not all that much more than it has been since computing began to be as pervasive as it is.
Ask the congressman who pushed through the legislation making video rental records confidential. Ask him why...
Europe is way ahead of us on this; The Privacy Forum Digest has had extensive coverage of the data privacy laws in place in the European Union. Short version: they're great for people, but they're going to raise costs a bit for companies; how much is your privacy worth?
Most important, of course, is medical privacy: do you really want your employer even knowing that you felt the need to take an HIV test, regardless of whether they hear the results?
(Sure, some employers might be bright enough to realize that's an indication of responsibility, not something less respectable... but is yours one of them?)
GO Bucs!
