Slashdot Mirror
Taxing Text Messages?
Makarand writes "SMS is a very popular way of communication in the Phillipines
with an estimated 14 million phone subscribers sending an average of 10 text
messages a day. However, that may all change if a proposal from the IMF to impose a tax
on SMS is implemented to solve the country's fiscal problems according
to an article
in The Straits Times. The IMF is basing
its suggestion on the fact that the country's tax base currently rests on
the troubled sectors of the economy- banking and manufacturing, which cannot
be squeezed anymore. Hopefully, our political think tanks will not get any such ideas."
They will tax you for anything, up to and including dying.
In Europe, the telcos use SMS as a cash cow - it's unregulated (regulatory regimes were built in the age of analogue comms) and they rip you off. And it's already taxed (VAT) - it's time the companies charge a more realistic price (15 cents a text message is a typical price today).
14 million subscribers sending 10 messages a day is 140 million messages. If the tax worked out to 1/10th of a cent on each message, the total cost to the user would be 1 penny each day - certainly not an unmanagable amount. That works out to $140,000 a day - or $51.1 million a year. That's a sizeable amount of cash. This is one of those cases where the effect to the consumer is nearly nil, but the economic benefits to the country are quite large. We should be congratulating the Phillipines for finding a new and unique way to find money in an economically unstable region, rather than criticize. It certainly beats putting huge amounts of tax on addictive or necessary products such as cigarettes and gasoline like we do here in North America, which I've always thought of as really sneaky and low.
The $0.10-$0.05 per message is taxed.
If you want to look at it, the $0.05 per message is a 'tax' for sending a message. What's neat about it is you are charged, and there is no guarentee of delivery.
Here, in Hungary (Europe), one SMS costs 12-15 cents (price converted to USD). This sum contains the base price + 25% tax (VAT).
The phone companies ARE using SMS's as cash-cows, since there's no way the infrastructure would justify this cost.
he IMF is basing its suggestion on the fact that the country's tax base currently rests on the troubled sectors of the economy- banking and manufacturing, which cannot be squeezed anymore.
Hint: if you stop squeezing they will expand. If you squeeze IMs thye will contract. Witness the revenue bonanza that US government gained by dropping the capital gaines tax just a little bit, not even down to optimum.
"Keynesians rush in where Stalinists fear to tread." -- me
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
This just shows that governments around the globe are all really after one thing - money. Usually it is at the cost of freedoms, but now it is at the cost of emotions. How low can we get?
... charging a tax of 2 cent for every spam mail sent
Bear in mind that the IMF are only brought in when the country is seriously screwed with it's economy already. When they are "advising" the government, they will take whatever steps are necesssary to get the country back on track rather than falling further into financial ruin. They often will take sometimes drastic measures and it is expected it is going to be a tough 5 to 10 years for the countries population. At least in this case, taxing SMS messages, which already happens in a number of countries (I'm taxed 2.5c (Euro cent) per text message which is tax at 21%) . This issue is not one to get into a twist over.
Aren't SMS already taxed? You pay for each SMS message, it shows up on your phonebill, and then the government adds salestax or value added tax. End of story.
I assume that phone companies pay taxes there, like every other businesses....
J.
in italy someone (of the politicians) was hoping to get an email tax some years ago. i never saw more details of it, whether it should have been for who spent mail or who received it. and they didnt even think how to apply it for some who dont use italian email providers. fortunately THAT stupid tax never came true!!!
So, given the demographic that seems to like "texting", isn't this like lotteries ie. a tax on stupid people? It seems to me to be only interesting to people for which email is some sort of "novelty".
... and with the baffling popularity of "texting", this trend looks set to continue into a new century.
Text messages are *ridiculously* expensive already, for what you get. Think about the cost per byte that they are charging people! I'd be prepared to pay a very small flat monthly fee to send as many messages as I like. Any thing else is simply price gouging.
Not to mention that they take too long to compose. It amuses me to watch Joe Average compose one of these things. In the time it took to compose the message and send it, they could have called the recepient 10 times already, and sorted out whatever it was in 30 seconds, or left a message at the speed at which they can speak.
Still, no one ever underestimated the intelligence and taste of the general public
The big problem is that fillipinos in the US regularly use SMS messages instead of making phone calls to communicate with their relatives in the phillipines. This "Tax" smells like a phone company conspiracy perpetrated through the IMF.
Hopefully, our political think tanks will not get any such ideas.
We have think tanks over here? I thought we just had televisions.
the republican congress has a bill in the hooper ( aplace where new bills are held until the next session) that does something very similar. It charges the internet user based on usage per text messaging and email.
Taxing bad spelling could have the effect of balancing the budget and teaching good spelling. :-)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The IMF is a vehicle for implementing a policy that is designed to make poor nations poorer, and the US based financial world richer.
The IMF has a standard approach of privatization, deregularization, more taxes and less government spending. In practice, state assets are sold off to foreign investors, and capitals markets are deregulated to open the gates for speculation. At some point the price of basic living (cooking, heating, taxes) is raised, causing massive civil unrest, and collapse of the economy. In the ensuing turmoil, foreign corporations can buy the remaining assets of a country at garage-sale prices.
Don't take my word for it. Read about Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel laureate, former IMF economist and former director of the worldbank)
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salon
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The Observer
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The new republic online.
Or name a country where IMF intervention did work: (it failed in Indonesia, Thailand, Russia, Brazil and Argentina)Han-Wen Nienhuys -- LilyPond
The more tax revenue governments take in, the more they spend.
I doubt that this would do anything more than raise the overall levels of expenditure in that country.
I hate to say this, but the idea of doing this in the Phillipines (especially the imposition by a non-Phillipine organization) makes the the referenced newspaper article sound like a hoax too.
The IMF rears it's ugly head in plain sight for a change. It, and the World Bank, usually harvest small countries under the cover of darkness. You know the troubles of Argentina? The IMF and World Bank walked out of their with blood past the elbows. International loan sharks. Present a gentle helping image to the public, rotten to the core in reality.
Greg Palast's book, the Best Democracy Money Can Buy, goes into some detail about Argentina, as well as similar tactics used for other small countries. It's literally a harvest of entire countries. Four or five steps for stripping everything of value from a country, even the water. Controlling the ensuing riots is literally a step in the process. Someone leaked a bunch of documents from these international loan companies to Palast and he wrote a book about it. Very interesting reading.
What would the Impossible Mission Force do with all that money? Buy Barney some new explosives?
I spent about a month in the Philippines this last year, and text messaging is huge. Everybody has a cell phone, even if they don't have a house. People use them to keep in touch accross the large country. Pilipinos rarely make an actual call, they text short messages back and forth all day. They have "text mates" kind of like pen pals.. people that have never met but correspond over text. I bought my wife a few pre-paid cell cards.. they ran about 250 pesos.. USD5.00. This gives you very few minutes of phone time.. but unlimited text messaging. If this was to be taxed, it would be very detrimentel on the pilipino society. My wife and I are in Japan, the only way we can keep in touch with her family is over SMS texting.
magnanomous.
Come on.. where do you live? Every local government is like that.. looking for ways to squeeze every dollar they can out of their public.
Ever hear of the initiative to tax email for example?
What makes it worse is that the public workers never even see the money.. it goes to the legislature's pockets 90% of the time.
Its sad. None seem to understand economics.. less spending power = less spending = less tax revenue... from a local state rep : ' Gee cigarette tax revenue is down since we raised the tax last summer, we don't understand. We will have to raise the tax higher to make up for the lost revenue.. ' This was of course just after they froze all regular government employee salaries for 2 years, and bought the governor a new jet...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The IMF financial solutions are not always ideal. Look at what happened to countries which actually implements its proposals. Most end up becoming worse before seeking IMF bailouts.
Indonesia didn't improve, Argentina's financial woes worsens, and S. Korea ended up pawning some of their biggest companies. Malaysia almost took up IMF's offer during the 97-98 financial crisis, but luckily the govt forsees the impact of some of the conditions... and Malaysia is recovering quite well if compared to other countries in S.E. Asia.
The Filipino govt should be able to decide what's best for the country's economic condition because they are more familiar with the economic factors involved.
I'm not saying taxation is a bad decision, but it shouldn't be at the expense of the population's financial well-being. Perhaps taxation of mobile phone sales and accesories would be more fair?
Just my $0.02's worth.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
These IN SOVIET RUSSIA messages are taxing my patience...
well price of sms is probably going to drop down soon. now that mms is introduced in most countries (at least here in europe) its going to bring down the price of sms. also most new telephones support something called "sms over gprs" where you basicaly send your sms over gprs network. as gprs is very cheap here it would bring down price of single sms by more than 75%.
today standard sms price in sweden: 1,50 skr (around 0.15$)
if sent over gprs network: 0,20 skr (0.02 $)
main problem here is that none of current operators here support that function (i dont blame them, it costs them something like 0,01 skr to send sms and they take 1,50skr for each sms)....
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
"Hopefully, our political think tanks will not get any such ideas."
Yeah.. Its not like youre posting the idea on Slashdot or anything.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
an SMS here costs PhP 1.00, or approx. 2 cents. Cheap compared to most countries.
Most people here are not in favor on puting tax on SMS because believe it or not, most of the SMS users are in the middle-class and below. It's because it's hard to get a land line here, and the cheapest way to get around it is to use SMS. Paying high bills is not a problem because most are using pre-paid systems.
I don't think it would push through because as of now, most of the law makers are againts it. And most are againts it not because we'll have to pay more, it's also because we're sick and tired of the dictations of the IMF.
Take-off every
Dude, the Philippines is made up of 7100+ islands, and many of 'em are huge. Wireless communications makes a lot of sense here.
They should just tax corporate profits and let the corporation decide how to pass it on to the workers/buyers.
living in "developing" nations. I've seen this happen. I've come to the conclusion that it might well be better to starve on your own than take the "help" the IMF offers. Of course this is rarely an option because the IMF is usually called in by the 'developed' nations who already have the nation in trouble by the economic balls. The money raised isn't used so much to bail out the local economy as it is to bail out American and European companies invested in the troubled nation. Economic investments in 'infrastructure' are usually even made in such a way as to make sure all the jobs and money go to these Americans and Europeans, rather to local businesses and workers, thus actually depressing the local economy even further.
I think most people in 'developed' nations might not realize one other fact that relates to this specific issue. In rich countries it's the more economically 'endowed' and early adopters who are the most likely to have cell phones. They're a nice little toy.Teenage girls use them to keep track of each other while shopping at the mall for clothes they can't fit into their already overstuffed closets.
In poor countries it's the *poor* who are most likely to have cell phones. Your house may not have electricity. Hell, you may not even have a *house,* but you can at least scrape up enough money to have a phone so if a job offer comes in you can get it, and steal recharges from whatever source you can manage. Rich people have homes and land lines.
The *banks and businesses* are too poor to pay up enough to stay solvent (or are just plain not paying up). The solution is to squeeze pennies from the poor and unemployed.
Ummmmmmmmmmmmm, right.
KFG
Perhaps they should do something oh so "radical" like Russia did and just make a 15% flat tax. [satire engaged] The horrible, awful, terrible result is greater reveues than at any time ever in their history AND the greatest economic expansion ever too.
Horrible, oh the humanity! Equal taxes for all. [satire disengaged]
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
In the same way we pay tax on emails. Since I pay sales tax when I pay my ISP.
Hint: the Phillipines is Not Small, nor is it "an island".
is now flamebait? Not even a controversial fact at that.
It's standard practice damn near anywhere the dead actually have any money, although the *means* of levying the tax are often disguised ( such as a sales tax of a procedure or piece of 'funerary equipment' with no overt need to exist but required by law).
And what the hell else is an "inheretence tax" but taxing the dead? It comes from the deceased's estate, not from the heir's.
KFG
Hey, let's tax Tea while we're at it. But seriously. EVERYBODY in SE Asia uses SMS. If you can go 5 minutes without hearing and SMS reciept tone, there must not me anybody else withing 50 feet of you.
But that sort of taxation is the tactic of a government who can't support itself... Then again, the Phillipines needs some serious help. It is the definition of third world, sadly.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
is the surest (almost) way of communicating with someone. It is assured that the recepient will receive the SMS message and cannot ignore it. Unlike calling, wherein the recipient could just not answer the call. The quality of the service here is not that reliable for calling.
Most of the cellphone users here are pre-paid. We just buy $5.00 worth of credits that can be stretched for 2 months before expiration. Compared to post-paid users, the cheapest plan is between $10.00 - $12.00 per month. This includes 66 free text messages (if you send to the same network, outerwise you would be deducted $0.02 cents on your credit) every cycle, which is repeated every month. Therefore if the pre-paid subscriber can stretched his credit for two months he/she would have 132 free SMS messages. In the long run, if you are just using SMS, you can save a lot.
SMS messages here are not unlike IRCs (we Filipinos are just too fond of gossips =)). We abbreviate words, sentence, heck even entire phrases to send our message. T9 here just don't cut it. Even non-geek people here are at ease with using a cellphone, they may not know how to use email but they can sure type out messages in almost most cryptic, IRC style SMS messages.
I for one does not approve of the meddling of the IMF in the internal affairs of my country. But I will approved the increase taxation of sin products.
These IN SOVIET RUSSIA messages are taxing my patience...
Most, if not all, of 'em are shorter than 160 characters. Small enough to send you by SMS...
What's your mobile number, dude?
Some random comments and trivia knowledge. And a small suggestion to open source communities..
Philippines have been most active SMS users mostly because there the SMS is free (is in major cases and was in all cases) according to my knowledge.
Elsewhere I wouldn't blame goverments on imposing quite normal VAT on SMS, when for operators e.g. in Europe price of SMS/bits transferred vs. price of phone call/bits transferred is still around 1000 (some time ago I remember some calculation in Mobile Pricing Conference in Barcelona where the SMS was calculated to be 950 more cheaper, when only airtime cost is calculated). So SMS is really a money cow.
But things are even more sweet especially here in Finland when we talk about Value added SMS (premium SMS) where some poor application provider tries to catch some value for content and for this price premium operator takes nearly always more than half (e.g. normal SMS price is at cheapest 0,07 euro and VA SMS can cost for customer for example 0,5 euro where content provider gets around 0,2 euro and operator charges around 0,2 euro just for pricing!!), and that is something I call beeing cheap bastard. Especially when European operators are all the time wondering what happend to their long awaited revenues for value added services.
Well tomorrow might be brighter, when new version of SMS, MMS and EMS are coming. And at the same time there comes new Symbian or some other OS based phones that allow application developers to tailor the phone qualities more. Operators MMS pricing follows pretty much the same pricing as SMS. But now the backend server side and phone side (client) are more open and basically it is possible to make an almost combatible MMS client-server application that is operator independent, runs over GPRS and kills not only operators greedy MMS value chain, but also their existing SMS value chain!
- please somebody do it for me, when I am lazy and bit handicapped when it comes to programming.
filipinos are already overtaxed. the moment you buy 1 prepaid phone card, it is already taxed.
>>$140,000 a day - or $51.1 million a year
check your computation adjusted for pesos.. not dollars.
there is hundreds of millions lost in graft in corruption in philippines every year (FACT). if only the president is focusing her efforts on fighting graft, (and stop on politicking and working on her approval rating/image), the govt doesnt need to this ridiculous thing.
btw, filipinos have already given up long ago. any professional worker w/ an decent IQ have left the country already (or trying to leave). whats left are idiots/monkeys running the govt.
resistance is futile. you will be assimilated.
"[...]they rip you off. And it's already taxed (VAT) - it's time the companies charge a more realistic price (15 cents a text message is a typical price today)."
While 15 cents is inexcusably steep (10 a day = ~$45 a month!), I dont think that something like 2-5 cents a message is a bad idea, especially if the area needs money, the average person only sends 10 a day, and there are millions of users. It sounds like a very reasonable way for the citizens to help their region.
"These IN SOVIET RUSSIA messages are taxing my patience..."
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, your PATIENCE messages my TAXES.
I wouldn't have a problem with it here in the U.S. if it was, as someone said, 1/10th of a cent!
Of course, looking back to reality, it would go to causes
I differ on.
Sigh, when I was younger, you could do a search on "Bush" and come up with, um, things, other than politics.
The US economy....and I would even go so far as to add society...depends on cheap, plentiful gasoline. Do not forget that the country is very, very, large, and people (& businesses) exist very, very, far apart from one another.
Making gasoline expensive (and thus making cars expensive) is all well and good when your country provides realistic alternatives, i.e. mass transit. In America, mass transit is for sallow city folk, "ethnics", and people who are not "competent" enough to hold a license/drive a vehicle......
That's sort of like playing whack-a-mole with your economy. Anytime some sector starts to grow, beat it back down really quickly.
My armchair economic instinct would be to make sure the tax structure is flattened rather than putting an extra squeeze on any part of the economy that is actually working.
in soviet russia they do not send text messages ... doh
Let them get ideas...ill just stop using the service. When everyone stops using it and it effectivley becomes dead, will they make it free again? And if not, we can probably live without it. Cheers!
Soviet Russia does not exist.
--you are correct and palast is a GREAT journalist.
the imf/world bank work exactly like the corporate raiders of the 80's, with a twist. They basically come in,secretly bribe off or blackmail enough of the top politicos in a country to get them to agree to these "loan" terms. The collateral is these nations natural resources usually, along with their currencies. After a billion or so gets deposited in dictator A's secret accounts, they bankrupt these countries and own them. THE IMF KNOWS IN ADVANCE THE LOANS CAN'T BE PAID BACK. It's a tremendous scam, causing slavery and strife. They make the mafia loan shark operations look like charity.
here is a relevant paste from a palast article for anyone not familiar with either palast or the true machinations of the imf, it's good:
http://www.zmag.org/ParEcon/palastimf.htm
IMF'S FOUR STEPS TO DAMNATION
How crises, failures, and suffering finally drove a Presidential adviser to the wrong side of the barricades
By Gregory Palast
It was like a scene out of Le Carré: the brilliant agent comes in from the cold and, in hours of debriefing, empties his memory of horrors committed in the name of an ideology gone rotten.
But this was a far bigger catch than some used-up Cold War spy. The former apparatchik was Joseph Stiglitz, ex-chief economist of the World Bank. The new world economic order was his theory come to life.
He was in Washington for the big confab of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. But instead of chairing meetings of ministers and central bankers, he was outside the police cordons. The World Bank fired Stiglitz two years ago. He was not allowed a quiet retirement: he was excommunicated purely for expressing mild dissent from globalisation World Bank-style.
Here in Washington we conducted exclusive interviews with Stiglitz, for The Observer and Newsnight, about the inside workings of the IMF, the World Bank, and the bank's 51% owner, the US Treasury.
And here, from sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we obtained a cache of documents marked, 'confidential' and 'restricted'.
Stiglitz helped translate one, a 'country assistance strategy'. There's an assistance strategy for every poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation.
But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank's 'investigation' involves little more than close inspection of five-star hotels. It concludes with a meeting with a begging finance minister, who is handed a 'restructuring agreement' pre-drafted for 'voluntary' signature.
Each nation's economy is analysed, says Stiglitz, then the Bank hands every minister the same four-step programme.
Step One is privatisation. Stiglitz said that rather than objecting to the sell-offs of state industries, some politicians - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water companies. 'You could see their eyes widen' at the possibility of commissions for shaving a few billion off the sale price.
And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest privatisation of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. 'The US Treasury view was: "This was great, as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We DON'T CARE if it's a corrupt election.." '
Stiglitz cannot simply be dismissed as a conspiracy nutter. The man was inside the game - a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet, chairman of the President's council of economic advisers.
Most sick-making for Stiglitz is that the US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia's industrial assets, with the effect that national output was cut nearly in half.
After privatisation, Step Two is capital market liberalisation. In theory this allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money often simply flows out.
Stiglitz calls this the 'hot money' cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days.
And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation's own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.
'The result was predictable,' said Stiglitz. Higher interest rates demolish property values, savage industrial production, and drain national treasuries.
At this point, according to Stiglitz, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: market-based pricing - a fancy term for raising prices on food, water, and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls 'the IMF riot'.
The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, 'down and out, [the IMF] squeezes the last drop of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,' - as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots.
There are other examples - the Bolivian riots over water prices last year and, this February, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You'd almost believe the riot was expected.
And it is. What Stiglitz did not know is that Newsnight obtained several documents from inside the World Bank. In one, last year's Interim Country Assistance Strategy for Ecuador, the Bank several times suggests - with cold accuracy - that the plans could be expected to spark 'social unrest'.
That's not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to make the US dollar Ecuador's currency has pushed 51% of the population below the poverty line.
The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and tear gas) cause new flights of capital and government bankruptcies This economic arson has its bright side - for foreigners, who can then pick off remaining assets at fire sale prices.
A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers but the clear winners seem to be the western banks and US Treasury.
Now we arrive at Step Four: free trade. This is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, which Stiglitz likens to the Opium Wars. 'That too was about "opening markets",' he said. As in the nineteenth century, Europeans and Americans today are kicking down barriers to sales in Asia, Latin America, and Africa while barricading our own markets against the Third World 's agriculture.
In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade, which is just as effective and sometimes just as deadly.
Stiglitz has two concerns about the IMF/World Bank plans. First, he says, because the plans are devised in secrecy and driven by an absolutist ideology, never open for discourse or dissent, they 'undermine democracy'. Second, they don't work. Under the guiding hand of IMF structural 'assistance' Africa's income dropped by 23%.
Did any nation avoid this fate? Yes, said Stiglitz, Botswana. Their trick? 'They told the IMF to go packing.' Stiglitz proposes radical land reform: an attack on the 50% crop rents charged by the propertied oligarchies worldwide.
Why didn't the World Bank and IMF follow his advice?
'If you challenge [land ownership], that would be a change in the power of the elites. That's not high on their agenda.'
Ultimately, what drove him to put his job on the line was the failure of the banks and US Treasury to change course when confronted with the crises, failures, and suffering perpetrated by their four-step monetarist mambo.
'It's a little like the Middle Ages,' says the economist, 'When the patient died they would say well, we stopped the bloodletting too soon, he still had a little blood in him.'
Maybe it's time to remove the bloodsuckers.
gregory.palast@observer.co.uk
International pirates.
They come up with some grand scheme to help a 3rd world country, and loan them a bunch of money for a dam, a power plant, etc, etc. It fails miserably.
Now the country has to pay this mega project off, plus their original debt. If the country looks like it will default on their payments, the IMF comes in and says, "We'll prop you up, but we need to be in control." The IMF then gets farmers to change from food to cash crops, cuts off any semblence of workers benefits, etc.
For example, in Equador, "...the IMF's 167 loan conditions look less like an assistance plan and more like a blueprint for a financial coup d'etat"
As Bruce Cockburn sings, "IMF / dirty enough / takes away anything it can get / always certain that theres one thing left / keep them on the ropes with unsupportable debt..."
the countries that were in soviet russia in one time are still called the countries of soviet russia...and then do not get of the subject we are talking about text messages..
Steve Forbes (probably the most visible supply-sider around these days) is always talking about the stupidity of the IMF, most recently:
The IMF, with its lethal prescriptions of devaluing currencies and raising taxes, continues to wreak havoc around the developing world. Turkey--critical because it is a pro-American, secular Muslim nation whose help we need in the war on terror--is writhing under the IMF's economic treatments. So is Brazil.
The IMF Has Lost Its Way by Stephen Hanke makes a solid case for killing the IMF.
Why the IMF and World Bank survive is beyond me. I'm not hopeful that anything will change in the near term, given that Bush picked a Goldman Sachs alum to be his economic advisor, against the wishes of supply-siders, likely in part to smooth things over with the opposition Democrats (Goldman Sachs is an overwhelmingly Democrat company, Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin came from there, as did current New Jersey Senator Jon Corzine). Hopefully I'm wrong about this.
Note that an American is never appointed to head the IMF. Usually a European gets the job, never mind that America puts up the largest share of funding. I don't know why we let them get away with this.
The IMF plans I've read about generally do make good sense on the surface. The problem is that they seem to be conceived in a vacuum, not taking into account anything beyond the short-term fiscal problem. You can't hope to tackle monetary policy without addressing the fundamental social and political problems including a working and respected legal system, safe housing, pure food and water, employment and worker protection laws, preventing involvement of the military in civic affairs and- forget about imposing a republican or democratic government- deterring tribalism, cronyism, organized crime or bold-faced exploitation by oligarchs. It's putting the cart before the horse and that is why is rarely works.
- Technik~
It's all a matter of how much respect you have for your fellow citizen. In order for outsiders to enslave you, you must first enslave yourself.
In any case, this silly IMF phone tax will indeed tax business regardless of how regressive it may be. Reduced communications hurt everyone and slow up the entire economy. When you can't talk, you can't get things done.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Based on our experience last year in providing SMS services to one of the 2 main providers there they are quite happy to reneg on any written agreement and leave you flapping in the breeze. Wealth and power is concentrated in handful of connected familiies with connections - indescribably corrupt is the means by which a tax will be diverted into the same hands and the poor people I see in the street will not get a peso mean for them. I was only warned of this corrupt regime by out European business partners AFTER our small Australian company was screwed after we delivered the product.
If it moves, tax it.
Either way, SMS will be cheaper than getting landlines in the Philippines. Most people use mobiles because that's the best option compared to getting a landline. I still think it'll be quite sad for the poorer people, which amounts to a sizeable number.
.smell my feet.
Only 10 messages a day with 14 million phones. I do not see much money being made unless they charged like $5,000 per message. :)
Man the IMF is always acting like a bunch of meanies. Ethan Hunt can't even get his requested vacation time.
Worms suck.
so your country is in the shits, they can't squeeze more taxes from banks, so they figure ppl smsing all the time can afford to pay a bit more or make a voice call.
what's the problem? your gov't finding $ to fix the place up. it's not like the $ is going somewhere else...
to tax the messages, the authorities
.02 per message they could charge
are going to have to log (long term)
the messages and control the infrastructure
over which they travel. That includes
more regulation of the ISPs at each end,
etc....
Instead of
$5.00 per month (eg FCC access charge in US).
Most likely, they **want** the messages.
No doubt man, that's one ugly duckling. My condolences. Maybe i should send a bottle of whiskey instead, and some pithy advice:
"When in doubt, go for the sister."
> What does ELF stand for (in respect to Linux?)
ELF is the first rock group that Ronnie James Dio performed with back in
the early 1970's. In constrast, a.out is a misspelling of the French word
for the month of August. What the two have in common is beyond me, but
Linux users seem to use the two words together.
-- seen on c.o.l.misc
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