[Workaccount2]

There is a key difference, privatization means a flat cost, whereas public means an income based cost.

About 30% of Americans get (NWS) weather data for free. They pay no income tax yet receive the same level of public benefits. On the other hand, a handful of Americans pay millions for weather data, and receive the same thing as those who paid nothing.

For a private service though, it would just be $20/mo or whatever for everyone.

[gusgus01]

Where did you get 30% from? I'm just curious since NWS data is widely used as a source for creating weather forecasts, which if I had to guess near 100% of people use in one way, shape, or form. I think Google uses it, so anyone with an Android phone is one click away from a forecast using the data.

On the matter of taxes being proportional to income, I'm not going to argue about progressive taxation or any moralistic standpoint of proportional taxation. From purely a utility standpoint, those handful of people probably reap way more value from that NWS data being available. The richest people (those paying the millions for NWS) usually are that rich from the labor of others, and those labor forces all get value from the data to help plan their days, including getting to the workplace safely. Another even more direct use for the economy would be routing of trucks through snowy passes, or planning for large construction companies.

[Workaccount2]

~30% of Americans do not pay income taxes, i.e. they get public services like NWS data for free.

Nothing else you said is wrong, I'm just saying that government services are effectively progressively priced based on income.

[gusgus01]

For the first part, I totally misread that several times. Sorry about that.

Looking around, the exact number is quite hard to pin down because of the definition of it, but ~30% is probably a very fair estimate based on https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/tpc-number-those-who-dont...