May 29, 2014
Sir, John Gapper, perhaps solely wearing his hat of a writer, basically proposes creating a publisher monopoly in order to counter the growing strength of a distribution monopoly such as Amazon, “Publisher must become giants to take on Amazon”, May 29.
As a reader, I am not certain I want to be squeezed by those who clearly would then have an interest coming into some agreements that might not benefit me, though the truth is that technological advances married to the reach-out of globalization, do seems definitively to be leading us down that path.
And what can we do to keep alive our alternatives? I have not given too much thought on how it could be implemented but I think that the introduction of tax-rate progressiveness, for corporate profits and or dividends, based on market shares, could be something worthwhile to explore.
Why for instance should “The Shop Around the Corner” have to face the same tax structure as Amazon?
And of course, in the same vein, why should a company that fights naked and unprotected in the markets face the same tax structure as one that operates under the protection of intellectual property rights?