Indian Bicycle Marketing* vs Diagonal Comparisons

From the BBC:

A windfall tax could be levied on tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Facebook to pay for public interest journalism, Jeremy Corbyn is to say.

The Labour leader will call for radical reform of the media landscape in a speech at the Edinburgh TV Festival. He will say digital "monopolies" which "extract huge wealth" could pay for non-profit, investigative reporting.

Well, that's all lovely, but illustrates yet again that May's Tory government and Corbyn's Labour opposition aren't that far apart, they are still nicking each other's ideas.

Wasn't it Tory Chancellor Philip Hammond who mooted an Amazon Tax about two weeks ago "to ensure there is a more level playing field for high street retailers"?

Which gives us a nice diagonal comparison** to complement the Indian Bicycle Marketing.

For some reason, people have succumbed to the Big Numbers Fallacy and think that Amazon et al are the most mightily profitable businesses in the world. Taken in isolation, maybe they are, but those are global profits; the total income of UK buy-to-let landlords vastly outweighs the total profits of Amazon, Facebook, Google. But we all are agreed They Are Evil And Must Be Taxed More Heavily.

So the voters' choice is now narrowed down to this: what should the government do with the revenues from the Amazon Tax. Subsidise 'High Street retailers' or subsidise news outlets? What if we think that both are stupid ideas? The obvious other choices, like don't invent new taxes; or spend the revenues on something else entirely, which could include cutting other taxes or paying off the National Debt, are off the table.

* A political strategy where one party proposes very similar policies to that of the opposition, but gives a diametrically opposite reason for doing so.

** When people (are asked to) make comparisons between two completely different things, in extreme form, the Poor Widow in a Mansion living next door to a millionaire in a small flat.