10L+ per square meter for land....

Well it might make sense if you're from the US, but what about the rest of the world? How do I deposit $US? With the current system, I can buy $L in one simple transaction. Your suggestion would involve a whole lot of hassle for those of us using other currencies.

The whole notion that the stipend is "welfare" is incorrect. Your monthly premium account fee not only buys you access to the grid, it buys you that weekly stipend. To eliminate or reduce the stipend would change the value proposition that LL gives its players, much to LL's loss in my view.

Incidently, the exchange rate that is always tossed around of L$361/$1 is based on the yearly stipend.

L$500/Week x 52 = L$26000
L$26,000/$72 = L$361/US$

And clearly, that is not the way to set the exchange rate. I know residents that make quite a bit of LL through referrals...

These suggestions of "taxing the rich" are ill thought out. There are two measures of wealth in SL: L$ and land. If you tax L$, you have several options; none of which are workable

1) LL could implement a sales tax. That raises money--but like any transaction tax, tends to hit the less well off harder than the rich.

2) LL could tax (or increase fees on) Linden sales on the Lindex. Such as tax would tend to target the L$-rich, as they are usually the only people with a surplus of L$. But such a tax works only if there are no Lindex competitors out there. In the real world, that would drive most large L$ sales to other exchanges.

3) LL could tax L$ income. But to hit the rich only (because otherwise, this is just a transaction tax), they have to be able to measure income over a period of time, set and calculate tax rates, and have some way of collecting. They could hard code this into the system--but as you may have noticed--LL doesn't even have the resources to fix texture loading. I doubt the have a lot of programming man-hours to devote to creating a taxation system.

Or they could have the players calculate, file returns, pay their own taxes. Which only works if your players think playing tax accountant is entertaining (and this doesn't even begin to address the possibility of cheating--or LL employee time in just processing the things).

I can't think of any faster way to drive people out of the SL world, than to introduce and income tax. After all, its so much fun in RL, isn't it?

Or LL could tax land. Oh wait--they already do that. It's called tier. And as taxes go, it is a huge one. SL landowners provide the bulk of LL's revenues. If they increase the effective tier rates by adding a L$ tax on land, many marginal landowners will tier down. Which means less revenue for LL--not something any company is going to be likely to want.

Finally--there is another fundamentally unfair element to these schemes that you are all overlooking: L$ rich does equal US$ rich. Let me repeat that in all caps for the benefit of those with their heads too high up in ivory towers to read lower case letters:

L$ RICH DOES NOT EQUAL US$ RICH

There are a good number of creators and land traders in the SL world for whom their SL income is either all, or a significant portion of, their RL income. The various "tax the rich" schemes are going to hit these creators hardest. These proposed pretend-world taxes will take real-world money they need for rent, bills, and food away from them. You are essentially talking about taxing these people to pay for the stipends of other players who may be (in RL) much better off financially. People in the forums also like to bitch about the largest of the Land Barons, but if you were to look at their net--after tier, business expenses, and taxes--real world income from SL, I think you would find that most SL residents with a good RL tech job probably take home more.

The whole idea is a non-starter.

There are two big stumbling blocks to removing the Linden and moving to a USD economy.

First, what do you do with all the lindens in circulation now? Do you just wake up one day and LL declares that lindens are now worthless? Do they buy back all the lindens at a loss (a huge, terrible awful loss, btw) or do the players suck it up?

Second, as was hinted at above, get rid of the linden and that means get rid of the premium stipend, and that means a LOT of people getting rid of their premium account. LL would lose a big chunk of their income.

Getting rid of the Linden right now would create a huge financial hardship for either the players or LL or both.

P.S. Anyone have a ballpark estimate of the number of lindens in circulation?

I could afford to buy Lindens. I don't. That would spoil the fun for me.

The Lindens already "tax" the rich in the form of land tiers. Taxing the Linden dollar balance would just encourage people to dump their Lindens on the market, which would drive the price of Lindens further down.

For me the fun is entering a new world, starting on an equal footing with other people, and the rising up in that world through competition in that world. I don't care if I rise slower than people who dump a boatload of cash into Second Life. That is fun for them, but it would not be fun for me.

Most of the rich already susidize the poor by giving away cash in various ways.

Anyhow, I'll just keep plugging along, paying my SL expenses with my SL income, pretty much the way I do in real life. (We need another name for real life, by the way, cause SL is getting pretty real nowadays.)

Looks like you got your wish. Is that permanant?

BEST. QUOTE. EVER.

Its money printing.
You pay LL 10bucks and they print 2000L each month, they dont buy Lindens worht 10$ from the market, they create them from thin air.
And moneyprinting generates inflation.