Yes, it is awfully hard to have the cake and eat it too!

Let's face it, globalization is awfully hard to discuss when "like most of us do we try to have our cake and eat it too and Martin Wolf's "How to preserve the open economy at a time of stress", May 21, is but another example of it. I agree with it all, full-heartedly, yet I have not the faintest idea of what I really have agreed with. It might be that we need to simplify the whole globalization equation in more manageable pieces.

Martin Wolf mentions for instance "redistributing the spoils of globalization, not sacrificing them" and which sounds a quite sensible thing to do. But that would have to start by identifying the spoils and perhaps wake up to the fact that the spoils are not to be found in a faraway country but in your own neighbourhood, in your own friendly neighbours courtyard.

Trying to speculate about where the non-obvious spoils are to be found, as those arising from higher prices of commodities are easier to identify, I frequently end up making two questions that might indicate possible new direction, exactly the purpose of questioning.

The first is. Is it logical that profits made by competing nakedly cost to cost in an efficient market should be taxed at the same rates that profits derived from an activity to which society has provided special shelter, like intellectual property rights?

The second, much more mundane, is why should a sportsman that earns a fabulous amount because he plays in a franchise with global reach pay income taxes based on where he slugs or kicks it out? Should he not pay it to his homeland or proportionately to where his audiences are?