I don't post on social media, it seems like an invasion of my privacy. But so many people are glued to it. I used to at least read Twitter every few days but it's now filled with ads. Now that I think about it, the sales/use tax should apply to every ad on social media.

As far as I can tell, Instagram is just a site where actors and influencers post pictures of themselves, sometimes posing with products they are promoting for a fee. Good for them, they can pay the tax too.

Now dream of all the money such a tax would bring in, maybe even more than marijuana sales bring. What should the feds do with it? They could put it into health care, health insurance, pay more to Medicare doctors so they don't abandon treating the elderly, fix the infrastructure, tear down every piece of fence built when Donald Trump had a desk in the oval office. And on and on.

Believe it or not, we engaged in mass communication before cell phones and the Internet. Somehow, 500,000 people got to Woodstock in 1969 and to Washington, D.C. to protest the Vietnam War.(See Forrest Gump, I was at that protest as were college kids from just about every state). Back then, we all knew which concerts were coming to town and wre able to spread word of events like activist marches and protests. We knew which theater was playing the movie we wanted to see and what time it started. We figured out when Daylight Savings Time started and ended.

Some of us even practiced law before there were computers and xerox machines. Or before Lexis and Westlaw, when you had to go to the law library and Shepardize by hand, lugging 6 or 7 case law books back to your table.

Even today, word about the protests has spreads without social media. Cuba is a good example, because the government there made the internet inaccessible. In disasters, when power goes out, people go knocking on each others door to check on everyone in the neighborhood. They did it this week in Germany and Belgium.

Social media is for promoters, profiteers and millenials who want to earn quick money or hope to become self-made stars and think they can do that with a laptop in any country that has viable internet. "Influencer" is now an actual profession, according to the media. I'd probably be a digital nomad too if I were in my 20's.

But it's just commercialization. Does it matter whether it's commercialization by people selling the six inch heels they are wearing or their brand of activism on Instagram or Twitter? I don't think so. You could end Twitter and Faceboook and it would make zero difference to hundreds (or at least tens) of millions of people who don't know what it is and don't have time for it anyway.

There is precedent for such a tax: The cigarette tax was used to make people quit smoking. It worked, didn't it? When I moved to Colorado, cigarettes were 26 cents a pack (and gas was 26 cents to 40 cents a gallon.) I still have the little notebooks I used to write down my expenses and contacts in. I wish they made them now.

Would anyone here really miss their Twitter account if they decided to let it go because the government started charging a tax for each use?

A few years ago they made Amazon collect sales tax in all 50 states. I recall people grumbling about it but not calling for the heads of whatever agency or legislative body that forced Amazon to implement it.

Lastly, for once I'd like to see a tax that doesn't affect me. (I'd have no trouble giving up social media accounts I never use). Sales and other taxes (like for TV, cable, phone and internet and cars) are way too high. This would level the playing field a bit and make the people tying up the internet with tweets pay their share.

And it would stop the spreading of misinformation about the vaccines because millions less people will pay to see it.

I'm sure I'm overlooking something, but right now I can't think of it.