Repeal
the
Language
Tax!

The "Language Tax" refers to the financial benefit that accrues to English-language-using nations, corporations, and individuals, as a result of the widespread acceptance of English as the default language of international and interethnic communication. Although this "tax" affects all nations, corporations, and individuals which are not primarily English-using, it falls heaviest on those (especially in the third and fourth "worlds") that can least afford it.

What are Esperantists for? Read the Prague Manifesto, a 1996 summary of the movement's objectives in language-policy terms.

For example, Britain receives a net profit of something in the hundreds of millions of euros annually as a result of other countries' need to send their students there to perfect their English. (The United States presumably realizes a similar take, perhaps more, though I haven't seen quantified documentation.)

Countries like Germany and Japan can afford their end of this equation, though it does cost them money. But countries like Mali or Honduras cannot really afford their part. The result is in effect a "tax" that benefits the English-using minority part of the world at the expense of the non-English-using majority, which is also on average poorer and less able to pay such a regressive added cost.

At the same time, the widespread assumption that English is or will become the default medium of international communication means that many theoretically international organizations and media make little or no effort to make themselves accessible to participation by the English-deprived. If you want your opinion heard, you will make it known in English (yet if your English isn't pretty good, chances are it won't get aired).

As a start towards rectifying the matter, explore the Esperanto alternative!

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Esperanto-USA