Perhaps it's just me, but--. What is it about us that we seem to believe that we get all sorts of free stuff just for accepting all the brainwashing cum advertising that accompanies it? If I want to sell you my latest version of some relatively useless gadget, I provide you with some brainless entertainment geared to the lowest common denominator? (think: a parade of freaks and losers to be publicly abused and ridiculed, a la Jerry Springer show, etc.). For every forty-five minutes of such, we must endure fifteen minutes, in which we are persuaded (or encouraged) to pester our doctors to prescribe the latest and costliest remedy for what some of us hypochondriacs probably suspect we suffer from.

Of course it costs money to get an assortment of fat people to display their flab or infirmities on national television, but to the business sponsoring these visual delights, that is just a cost of doing business. As such, the cost is added to the price of the product which the perpetrator writes off and is only taxed on the difference between his costs and his sale price. Which - surprise! surprise - the poor dope who takes the bait, pays!! How about those of us who merely use the commercial breaks to raid the refrigerator for a quick beer or sandwich? Don't even those of us who remain aloof to the blandishments and merely appreciate the 'eye candy' delivering the message, dont we retain the subliminal notion that Brand X must be better because we've heard of it more often than Brand generic?

My question is this: Should advertising be included in the taxable costs of conducting business? If we pay taxes on the difference between production costs and sale prices should we allow all the unlimited saturation of the airwaves with whatever propaganda we choose to inflict on a somnolent public? I imagine that if I were making a product, say,- canned soup. Let's call it Campbell's. Another guy makes a soup which competes with mine - call his, say- Progresso. Mine costs $1.29 to produce and, to grab a bigger market share, I add 10 cents of advertising. Progresso guy's soup also costs $1.29 to produce and he adds 12 cents worth of commercials including blindfolded taste experts pronouncing his soups far superior to mine. He gains a bigger share and thus can sell at a penny less per can than I can. Well, why don't I just spend 14 cents on a more titillating TV production to advertise my soup, so I can grab back a bigger share of the soup market. After all, it doesn't cost me any more, does it? Well, perhaps not me, the producer of soup, but how about the taxpaying soup consumer? I submit that if the producer is denied the privilege of 'free advertising", the cost of advertising would come out of his profits and we would be spared much of it. We only need to compare the retail costs of generic 'store' brands with the often identical, 'Name Brands' .

These same 'hucksters' who sell us soup. sell us everything else. Thay sell us the notion that whatever is good for the producer of a product comes free of charge to us, and we get the added bevefit of cheaper products because of the competitive advertising. That's what we're told - - -but, is it true?