It started out in the early 1970s; business schools and management consultants were pushing the strategy that it is more profitable to keep the product lines that are number 1 or 2 in a category and divest the rest. The resulting effect was companies consolidating their grip on product lines by buying up their competitors. Then came the late 1970s with the neoliberal economists arguing that antitrust should focus on how to give the people lower prices, which they explained as allowing businesses to buy out competitors, thereby achieving efficiencies of scale that could be passed onto the consumer in the form of lower prices. This was heartily embraced by the Reagan administration.
The result should have been predictable: while we had recovered in the 1920s from monopoly’s grip on our economy, we now have it once again in spades. As Ganesh Sitaraman recounts in “The Great Democracy” [Basic Books, 2019]: four airlines own 80% of the market; three drug companies control 99%; four beef companies control 85%; the Fortune 100 companies control nearly 50% of our GDP.
And this concentration has not lowered prices for consumers; unsurprisingly, it has caused prices to rise. Further harm has been the result. Again from “The Great Democracy”: “The concentration of economic power harms consumers, increases economic inequality, and stifles economic growth and vibrancy. Mega-corporations use their power to squeeze suppliers and consumers to gain higher profits.” Research also shows that concentration leads to lower wages for workers, which — along with other factors — has given workers virtually no real wage gains over the last 40 years. This corporate economic power has brought outsized political power, resulting in these corporations getting favorable treatment on tax and regulatory laws; through extensive lobbying and political contributions, they have virtually bought our government.
To address this monopoly problem, we look to the the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). But here we find a regulator which, by its design and operation, is highly ineffectual. Most federal agencies write regulations, then police within their purview. Courts come in from time to time to review whether the regulations are within the scope of the law as passed by Congress. But the FTC actually contests mergers by taking the parties to court. And courts are ill equipped to rule on such complicated issues, so the powerful corporation has the wherewithal to strongly contest an agency’s actions. Additionally, the FTC’s design also contributes to its being ineffectual; rather than an organization with a chairman the FTC is a multimember commission with five members, no more than three coming from one political party.
As “The Great Democracy” states: “This design means that it is almost impossible to have a majority of active, aggressive regulators on the commission for any length of time, given compromise in the appointments process. And when the commission takes a strong action, minority commissioners often write dissents that legitimize opposition to regulations and act as a guide or roadmap for ideological judges who want to strike down those regulations.”
A further problem for FTC effectiveness is the fact that the FTC and the Justice Department share power in this realm. Both agencies have power to review proposed mergers, but the division of sectors is not clear-cut and is frequently a matter of a turf war. This results in “duplicative costs, inconsistencies in the application of the law, and confusion in the merger clearance process.”
While a clear case is made for strictly regulating the technology sector — Facebook, Google and Amazon as examples — “The Great Democracy” offers a solution for the entire antitrust issue: “The FTC should be relaunched as a new Anti-Monopoly Agency (AMA), with a single director. Then, to align with the normal model of regulation, the new AMA should be required to use its rulemaking power to define and specify violations of the antitrust laws. Again, the agency should return the agency’s focus to protecting and promoting a competitive economy.” As we did once before in our history, we must again break up these monopolistic players.
LEE KNOHL, Evanston, Ill.
Joe Biden triumphed on Super Tuesday. The support behind him is sincere and democratic. In any case, the DNC won’t have it otherwise. They will foist the old warrior through the convention like the corpse of El Cid, lashed to his saddle, leading his knights to victory over the Moors!
The concept of an Establishment underdog is absurd. The other absurdity of Joe’s candidacy is “electability.” Look at Biden. Listen. Biden’s Super Tuesday performance was helped immeasurably that his lack of resources limited exposure. Biden voters pulled the lever nostalgically for the brand, not the death-warmed-over candidate. As frontrunner it will be harder to keep Biden out of the public eye.
Although mentally acute, Bernie Sanders is also past his freshness date. The prairie populist William Jennings Bryan lost to Robber Baron puppet William McKinley by a whisker in 1896 — and by a landslide in 1900. It’s hard to keep a popular movement together. Betrayed hope devolves to apathy, the dark energy force behind status quo and powers that be.
McKinley was shot by an anarchist. His second-term vice-president had been handpicked by J.P. Morgan to bury his political career in that supernumerary office. This was New York’s trust-busting governor Theodore Roosevelt. He ushered in a half century of American politics in which progressivism held its own against reaction. (Thereafter prosperity became too general for class struggle to gain traction.)
Joe Biden could well defeat the historically disapproved President Trump. But he’s odds against to complete a term. Joe is, at this point, the living embodiment of the 25th Amendment. Progressives must insist on a “balanced ticket” from the convention. Either Sanders or Warren (less toxic, frankly) gets slotted vice-president (Klobuchar is “a warm bucket of spit”), or progressives give their apathy free rein!
If we can again sneak progressive populism through the White House back door, the habitually conservative electorate will honor its incumbency.
M. WARNER, Minneapolis, Minn.
With the rise of the Far-Right and Radical-Right, we not only have been experiencing the growth of “Survival-of-the-Fittest” Social Darwinist ideology in today’s national Republican Party featuring their desire not only to cut and reduce spending on all of the federal government social programs that help the middle and lower classes (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and College Student Loans), but we also are getting their growing cold-hearted desire to abolish all of them which they try to keep a secret from the American people as authors Jane Mayer and Nancy MacLean have well-documented by pointing out that they often use “stealth tactics” which are part of today’s “Right-Wing Playbook Of BAD FAITH.”
And along with this, we get what Alfred Hitchcock referred to as “Brutality With A Smile.”
An example of this was when Presidential candidate Donald Trump, during a televised Republican debate, literally mocked, made fun of, insulted, disrespected, and humiliated candidate Carly Fiorina by shouting “Look at that face!”
I still find it hard to believe that any human being could have been so cruel, sadistic, abusive, and disrespectful as to humiliate another human being like that, especially an accomplished woman who has lost a child to drug addiction and who has had to experience having a double mastectomy. This woman has suffered greatly in life, and did not deserve to be abused and publically humiliated like that.
But ultimately we all are held accountable and will be held accountable for how we have treated others in life, and that includes a right-wing, serial spouse-cheater, and dirtbag like Donald Trump.
STEWART B. EPSTEIN, Rochester, N.Y.
Jim Hightower quotes General Douglas Lute about Afghanistan, “We didn’t know what we were doing.” It brought to mind our awful mess in Iraq and our corporations’ artless deals with China. The key to American simplistic thinking can be found in a de facto motto from the 20-aughts, as expressed at that time in Fortune magazine: “Ready, Fire, Aim.”
RICHARD SIBLEY, Phoenix, Ariz.
OK, assuming that the public is wise to the feeble “centrist” Biden and that Bernie gets the nomination, let’s look ahead to the Veep running mate. It’s got to be Stacey Abrams.
Why? Because there are a lot of voters who like Bernie Sanders. but who are frankly afraid that he’s a dizzy airhead. Stacey Abrams would add an element of feet-on-the-ground practical competence to the ticket that would be reassuring to their voters.
MARIA ROSE, Indianapolis, Ind.
[Editor Notes: We’ll just mark that a full-throated endorsement of Stacey Abrams.]
By now we know that pangolins brought about the microbial pathogens known as COVID-19, alias Coronavirus. They are a hardshelled, long-tailed anteater type of armadillo thought to be the most valuable creature on Earth. And we thought we were!
These poor little animals are decimated for elixirs, potions and money, as are elephants’ tusks and rhinos’ horns. But it’s the pangolins’ hunger pangs that started it all and it’s guano get worse.
As the rainforests continue to be demolished, the Northern Hemisphere gets warmer and wetter and we get ticked off by flying, buzzing, biting, stinging anthropods, leading to more shut-offs, shut-downs and shut-ins.
As the Earth implodes, we find we can’t trust gnats, rats, bats or bureaucrats.
FLORA ORMSBY SMITH, Marblehead, Mass.
From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2020
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