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Comment by pkaler | Hacker News Reader

> The free Internet service will cost the government about 1.5 billion pesos ($32 million) a year and will be available in areas such as public schools, hospitals, airports and parks, said Monchito Ibrahim, deputy executive director of the Information and Communications Technology Office.

It's not free. It's subsidized.

This is the same debate I have with neighbors that want free wifi in the city. Sure. Do you want higher property taxes, too?

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It's not free. It's subsidized.

Nothing is free, if that's your point of view.

I think everybody understands that the term 'free' in contexts like this means 'free at the point of use'. Quibbling over it seems a little pedantic.

If it means better services for me and the people around me, yes, give me higher property taxes.

Being terrified of taxes is just peculiar - it's certainly not an argument-winning trump card.

It isn't being terrified of taxes. It is saying "things have a cost. Lets start talking about the cost and asking if we're really willing to pay it."

It's not actually saying "let's start talking about the cost". "Do you want higher taxes?" is a rhetorical statement that means "this is bad, because it will raise our taxes, which I think is inherently bad"; there's no real interest in a genuine discussion of the pros and cons.

The con is it's very difficult to get a government to lower taxes, not so difficult to have them increase it. Also that thing P.J. O'rourke said: giving money and power to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

I'm not aware of having met anyone who has ever said "I want to pay more tax", but I've met plenty of people who have said "that other group of people should pay more tax".

> The con is it's very difficult to get a government to lower taxes

This isn't true at all. It's very difficult to get a government to decrease the services it provides. If you decrease taxes without decreasing provided services, then that would be extremely easy to do -- until you run out of money. Look at the cluster fuck that is Kansas.

> I'm not aware of having met anyone who has ever said "I want to pay more tax"

In that case, you must either not live in the US or else live in a place with either really shit or really parasitic public schools. A huge percentage of school districts are majority funded by local (not state) tax dollars, at rates that are approved directly (i.e., by ballot measure).

Schools are the most obvious case because increases in (local) taxes that fund schools are typically ballot measures, and usually affect the population in a pretty homogenous way (except in very urban areas, but even then, property owners are usually a key voting block in local elections). But there are other taxes that a lot of people support increasing and would end up paying -- gas tax, alcohol tax, etc.

If you've really never met someone who said "I want to pay more taxes", then that's really just an indication that you're living in a bubble. It's not at all an uncommon sentiment. In fact, I'd say that "some of the taxes I pay could be higher if it's spent on the right things" is a far more common sentiment than "taxes bad, period".

Thanks for the reply. You're quite right, bit of a bubble here in Launceston, Tasmania. Population of about 100,000and relatively benign government.

I'm not afraid of taxes. I'm pointing out the cost.

And it's about focus. I live in Vancouver. The city should probably be focusing on the downtown eastside and on transit. In SF, the city should probably focus on Muni/BART and the Tenderloin. It's a matter of focus.

It's about competency. The city's website and mobile Apps are not very good. The coffee shops in my neighborhood can't get wifi right. I don't have confidence in the city being able to deliver wifi better than that.

Cost. Focus. Competence.

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