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"The U.S. government has voiced concern in the past that the European campaign for a “digital tax” unfairly targets U.S. tech giants." How about admitting that
by GolDDranks 7y ago
"The U.S. government has voiced concern in the past that the European campaign for a “digital tax” unfairly targets U.S. tech giants."
How about admitting that the U.S. tech giants unfairly use their monopolistic powers because the Internet has become a winner-takes-it-all economy.
- mfatica 7y agoCan you provide some examples there support this claim of a "winner-takes-it-all economy"?
- pennaMan 7y agoFacebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google should suffice.
- free652 7y agoAll of them complete between themselves, that's a bad example.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoI wasn't aware Facebook has its own hardware ecosystem or music delivery store, Google does grocery deliveries, and Apple runs its own open import and reseller market. The "competition" is pretty nominal at this point. The areas of competitive overlap are much smaller than the areas of monopolistic market dominance.
- Pungsnigel 7y agoThey compete between themselves and also has several external competitors?
- FDSGSG 7y agoFacebook has a plenty of competition in the social media space, Apple certainly isn't the only hardware manufacturer, Amazon has competition everywhere and so does Netflix. Google hardly runs the only ad network. None of these companies are taking it all.
- johneth 7y ago> Facebook has a plenty of competition in the social media space Please give some examples.
- FDSGSG 7y agoWeChat, QQ, Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok, Discord, VK, Telegram, Reddit and presumably many more I'm forgetting.
- ricardobeat 7y agoGoogle + FB + Amazon will own 70%+ of digital advertising this year.
- AlchemistCamp 7y agoNetflix? Its entire business is basically the equivalent of one of Amazon's side experiments!
- shaki-dora 7y agoThe issue isn’t so much any anti-competitive misbehavior. Even though there are some specific practices that have landed FAANG in hot waters, those aren’t really different from any other companies’ of similar size. Monopolization just happens to be the natural state of any system that has network effects and where all costs are front-loaded (I. e. write the code once, scale to billions of users at, if you squint, zero marginal costs). But neither of these issues are the motivation for calls for a “digital tax”. Nor is economic nationalism. There have always been industries that were dominated by one or just a few countries: the US has media/entertainment, consumer goods manufacturing has almost entirely moved to Asia, etc. What’s different about “digital” is that requires essentially zero presence or taxable activity at the consumers’ location. Nobody felt the need to tax Hollywood’s movies because a ticket to ‘Titanic’ in Austria may have meant 2€ leaving the country, but the bulk of it actually stayed in the local economy, as (taxed) revenue of the theatre, local distributors, corn growers, and breweries. For physical products, this is even more obvious. French champagne served in a Billings, Montana restaurant is about 50% margin for the venue, 30% for the US-based distribution chain, and only 20% goes to funny mustaches people in striped shirts.
- oaiey 7y agoA digital tax is basically an equivalent to custom tax. Goods like German cars have to pay custom taxes during importing them to the US. A Netflix stream from the US to Germany not. And that is getting fixed. But it is fair to say: this is not only about taxes. This is also about countries gain control over global economy.
- dmix 7y agoJust because it happens for historical reasons doesn't mean it was a good idea. Not to mention those are physical things that require tangible resources to reproduce. There's so many things I have to pay 20-30% more for in Canada (for ex: $150 for shoes that are $100 in the US) for ridiculous protective import policies for old non-core industries that do little to help the economy.
- CptFribble 7y ago
- malvosenior 7y agoI think it's notable that none of the "winners" are European tech startups. They're all from the US. One could argue that because the US focuses on innovation and Europe seems to be focusing on legislation that the latter will always be chasing the former. If instead of making it more difficult to build technology products, Europe focused on making it easier maybe the would be able to provide some much needed competition to the US tech scene. They seem more determined to tear down value than create it though. In the end, it will be their own citizens suffering though lack of tech jobs available in their market (c.f. the going rate for a full time engineer in the US vs Europe), lack of innovative tech that caters to local needs and ultimately lack of tax revenue from local companies.
- norswap 7y agoYes, of course that is the only criteria at play. This tweet is entirely correct. There is absoluuuutely no way there are other issues to be considered. Nope!
- malvosenior 7y agoOf course there are multiple issues at play, this is one of them. Are you proposing that the extra layers of legislation around technology companies don't hamper innovation?
- norswap 7y ago(1) The parent definitely implies that this is the main differentiator between US and EU. (2) I don't think (meaning, I haven't heard except in the vaguest of terms) that there is that much "extra layers of legislation around tech". GDPR comes to mind — and honestly it's not that much of a bother, it just mandates things that companies should already be doing.
- pergadad 7y agoThere's some first mover advantage and some country/language limitations that can bring up costs, but the main reason is actually the easy availability of cash in the US. Successful European companies, especially startups, are bought by US players. Think Skype or Minecraff: successful European startups bought by a US giant (Microsoft). More poignantly, the VC money allows companies to exist that really shouldn't, and they in turn crowd out smaller less-funded competitors that stem from other markets. Think Uber and Lyft - two giant unprofitable startups that exist because of VC investment to burn. Or Bird. Or .. Funny enough, that's the two strategies that US companies/gov complain the Chinese are doing. That said, there are a few big European players, such as on mobile games (king digital), network infrastructure (Nokia), etc. Just not as significant name brand value in the anglophone world.