Everyone sees, at least those willing to see, that something is wrong when the billionaire class gets massively richer in a depression. when the stock market clings to all-time highs as millions are about to get evicted. when within 12 years another financial crisis is upon us and policy makers are tripping over themselves to bailout CEOs. but the unemployed are expected to get by on $1000 month max in some states no matter how much their income was.
Even the Pope is getting in on the case of making a shift happen saying the trickle-down economic “theory” didn’t work, unless you take it literally and understand the “trickle” part.
But the big story is the House Panel Saying Big Tech must be broken up. The Wall Street Journal did their normal fluff coverage of the report titled, House Panel Says Big Tech Wields Monopoly Power. I am sure many are hoping this report gets buried, but I do not think it will.
For 50 years, anti-trust has been crushed and sidelined and dismantled because both sides of the political isle have succumbed to the idea that bigger is better for the consumer. And the big 4 are presenting these same arguments today.
The Big 4
I write a lot about the Big 5 monopolies that are coming to dominant the SP500 index. The Big 4 excludes Microsoft which already lost its monopoly case… precisely at the 2000 market bubble top. So that leaves four: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.
But if you want the rest of the story, read Matt Stollers piece on the importance of this report and how it sets up a major shift in policy makers going forward. And if they beef up the anti-trust department, there are many other cases they can bring across the spectrum of the US economy. Wall Street please.
But the battle is not going to be easy. We have been moving toward the centralization of power and wealth our country since the Democrat Watergate babies showed up in Congress and they stopped pushing back on the Republican tendency to be pro-big-business to a fault.
This trend explains how we created the second gilded age where the top 10% now own about 50% of the national income and Trump’s tax cuts helped push the post tax income back to gilded age levels. BTW, the main tax revenue in the first gilded age was from… tariffs. Sound familiar.
And since you can never have too many charts to explain what has really happened since the shift in the 1970s here’s another one.
and…
So this anti-monopoly shift needs to happen. And it is just one front in the battle to return to a more decentralized America that the democratic experiment needs to continue to function.
Take a look at Matt Stoller’s latest: Congress Gets Ready to Smash Big Tech Monopolies because this is how Congress is suppose to work to protect the sovereignty of the people from power and monopolies. The next Congress needs to step up to the plate and act.
TSP Smart & Vanguard Smart Investor serves serious and reluctant investors…
…but today I care more about our democracy, so read Matt’s post. It goes into details other articles do not cover.
Categories: Perspectives