What upsets me is that they lobby to lower their taxes. We paid for it because Verizon and the good ol boys keep getting tax cuts and the average guy makes up the majority of taxes collected iirc.
It's bizarre, right? I mean, the research at universities is publically funded but the results are inaccessible to the general public despite having paid for it through taxes. For profit journals publish the results and tech developed is patented and sold by corps back to the people who funded the institutions that did the research to begin with.
Phone and internet infrastructure are natural monopolies and should not have private vendors. In Australia, providers are kept in artificial competition to prevent telstra from shutting out competitors from the infrastructure they own. Renationalisation would be far simpler and cheaper for all. But no. Free market capitalism is always better, reality be damned.
J3EL on July 22nd, 2018 at 02:53 UTC »
The internet shouldn't belong to anyone, but a government or some sort of public coalition is better than private, for profit companies
SVMESSEFVIFVTVRVS on July 22nd, 2018 at 03:23 UTC »
What upsets me is that they lobby to lower their taxes. We paid for it because Verizon and the good ol boys keep getting tax cuts and the average guy makes up the majority of taxes collected iirc.
Edit: I’m getting conflicting information here but according to the tax policy institute and my math, corporations paid about 18.2 percent of all taxes collected in 2015: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/amount-revenue-source
However, Bernie Sanders indicated 9 percent and politifact apparently deemed this mostly* true: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/aug/28/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-says-tax-share-paid-corporations-ha/
bunionmunchkin on July 22nd, 2018 at 04:28 UTC »
It's bizarre, right? I mean, the research at universities is publically funded but the results are inaccessible to the general public despite having paid for it through taxes. For profit journals publish the results and tech developed is patented and sold by corps back to the people who funded the institutions that did the research to begin with.
Phone and internet infrastructure are natural monopolies and should not have private vendors. In Australia, providers are kept in artificial competition to prevent telstra from shutting out competitors from the infrastructure they own. Renationalisation would be far simpler and cheaper for all. But no. Free market capitalism is always better, reality be damned.