Hacker News Reader

Comment by hacker_homie | Hacker News Reader

My thought was to write legislation that gives 20% of my generated ad revenue to me the customer as legal tender (no store credit, coupons) then have the government tax that income.

1. government gets new income source.

2. government is invested in making sure they are not getting short changed.

3. failure to pay me is fraud.

4. When you pay me now I know your crap is spying.

5. Government taxes almost never go down, with this system it going down will immediately be visible to consumers who will balk.

Problems: ad revenue is the new shrink-flation without it prices will rise. companies will fight this tooth and nail, but voters get "free" money.

View on HN

> ad revenue is the new shrink-flation without it prices will rise.

Some prices rise, some prices go down.

Ads aren't free money, the advertisers are paying for them (I know, seems obvious) but where do the advertisers get the money to advertise? Well, it's baked into the cost of the goods they advertise. That makes everything that advertises more expensive.

And yet advertising raises demand, which in intern causes people to offer to meet that demand which means competition, which lowers prices.

Lots of examples of this cycle you can search for.

That only works for smaller and unestablished brands. There are diminishing returns to the economy of scale.

Coca-cola, for example, isn't going to lower their prices in response to increased demand from their $4 billion marketing budget.

Higher demand causes higher prices, not lower. Competition is irrelevant because startup competitors have to advertise a lot more, making their prices even higher.

> My thought was to write legislation that gives 20% of my generated ad revenue to me the customer as legal tender

All companies now raise their prices by 20% or more depending on how much data they collect. Let's just make surveillance technology/pricing illegal. That way we're solving the problem instead of inventing accounting games and companies with more money than nation states can maneuver around or bribe their way out of.

> Government taxes almost never go down

Wasn't income tax 90% during America's golden age? What is it now?

"it going down will immediately be visible to consumers who will balk"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com