Corporate monopolies pose moral, economic, and political problems. They often engage in price fixing, affecting consumers; they have disproportionate power over labor wages, as well as towns, cities, states, and nations; they can control their supply chains in ways that erode the health of the natural and business environments; they are politically fascist and contribute to fascism in a deregulated economy where they also control media and lobbyists. Christian ethics must approach this issue by including observations of how God distributed land, the resource with the most productive power, in a very egalitarian and broad fashion, in Leviticus 25 and elsewhere.

Debate on Facebook with LF About Vaccines and Anti-Trust (May 13, 2021) about COVID-19 vaccine development and anti-trust as a limitation on the vaccine supply-chain

Debate on Facebook with LF About Inflation Being Partly Caused by Monopoly (Dec 29, 2022) about why “shareholder profits” is not enough

Debate on Facebook with LF About the Big Four Meat Processing Companies Inflating Prices (Jan 13, 2022) about the fact that massive meat processing companies are able to make more profits on meat simply by raising prices, not because the cost of raising cattle, or transporting cows, or paying labor has gone up.

Dodge v. Ford Motor Company 1919 (Wikipedia).  This a case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a manner for the benefit of his employees or customers.

Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, Reagan Reportedly to Seek Major Overhaul to Ease Antitrust Laws. Los Angeles Times, Jan 15, 1986. five specific proposals to weaken antitrust law based on the argument that U.S. firms need to be more competitive against foreign firms

CrashCourse, Progressive Presidents: Crash Course US History #29. CrashCourse, Sep 12, 2013. a 15 minute video featuring the progressive periods and policies of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; examines antitrust law

Zephyr Teachout and Lina Khan, Market Structure and Political Law: A Taxonomy of Power. Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy, 2014. explains why the relations within corporations/firms are political and the result of political ideologies. See Lina Khan, Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox. Yale Law Journal, Jan 2017. and Lina Khan, The New Brandeis Movement: America’s Antimonopoly Debate. Journal of European Competition Law and Practice, Mar 1, 2018. and all the writings of Lina Khan on her website; Khan is one of the foremost scholars of antitrust. See a biographical article on Khan by Alana Semuels, This Legal Scholar Has Some Bold Ideas For How to Take on Major Companies Like Amazon. Time, Oct 8, 2020.

Lillian Salerno, Want to Rescue Rural America? Bust Monopolies. Washington Post, Apr 20, 2017.

Jerry Useem, How Online Shopping Makes Fools of Us All. The Atlantic, May 2017. re: price setting

Mihir A. Desai, Capitalism the Apple Way vs. Capitalism the Google Way. The Atlantic, Jul 10, 2017.

Jared Bernstein, Democrats Say They Want to Go After Monopoly Power. Here's Why That's a Great Idea. Washington Post, Jul 27, 2017.

Brian Beutler, How Democrats Can Wage War on Monopolies—and Win. The New Republic, Sep 16, 2017. anti-trust law, Elizabeth Warren's CFPB

Alana Semuels, Can America’s Companies Survive America’s Most Aggressive Investors? The Atlantic, Nov 18, 2016.

Gillian B. White, How American Business Got So Big. The Atlantic, Nov 18, 2016. the return of antitrust regulation

Jeff Desjardins, The Evolution of Standard Oil. The Virtual Capitalist, Nov 24, 2017.

Antonio Garcia Martinez, Facebook Is Not a Monopoly, but It Should Be Broken Up. Wired, Mar 14, 2018. Facebook is a monopsonist, or a demand-monopoly rather than a supply-monopoly.

Hasan Minhaj, Amazon. Patriot Act, Nov 4, 2018. explores predatory pricing, antitrust law, and the dangers of big companies

Peter Whoriskey and Dan Keating, Overdoses, Bedsores, Broken Bones: What Happened When a Private-Equity Firm Sought to Care for Society’s Most Vulnerable. Washington Post, Nov 25, 2018. “Under the ownership of the Carlyle Group, one of the richest private-equity firms in the world, the ManorCare nursing-home chain struggled financially until it filed for bankruptcy in March. During the five years preceding the bankruptcy, the second-largest nursing-home chain in the United States exposed its roughly 25,000 patients to increasing health risks, according to inspection records analyzed by The Washington Post.”

Jonathan Tepper, The Conservative Case for Antitrust. The American Conservative, Jan 28, 2019. "This is American tradition: supporting capitalism with free and competitive markets over monopolies and concentrated wealth"

Hasan Minhaj, Drug Pricing. Patriot Act, Feb 17, 2019. features epi-pens and insulin, patent law and PBM's

Andrew Cockburn, Making the World Safe for Oligopoly. The American Conservative, Mar 5, 2019. Obscure law guarantees bailout protections for a handful of 'too big to fail' institutions.

CNBC, Why the US Has No High-Speed Rail. CNBC, May 7, 2019. after WWII, the US lost its rail infrastructure and global leadership position in rail, because the auto and oil industries bought up streetcar services and then dismantled the system. Eisenhower invested in highways and cars. Also because of white suburbs, we became a car-dependent culture.

The Young Turks, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez And Elizabeth Warren Put Steve Mnuchin On Blast. The Young Turks, May 23, 2019. how hedge-fund manager Eddie Lampert became CEO and placed Steve Mnuchin on the board so he could asset-strip Sears, buy Sears property himself and rent it back to Sears at prices he set himself, and drive Sears into debt from private equity and his own hedge-fund while issuing stock-buybacks to profit himself. See also The Young Turks, Why Sears Bankruptcy Should Outrage You. The Young Turks, Dec 17, 2018. on how private equity companies destroy other solid corporations; and how other media companies do not cover it accurately; Sears execs will make huge bonuses for the bankruptcy proceedings, while workers make nothing. See also Bess Levin, Did Steven Mnuchin Help His College Roommate Steal $2 Billion? Vanity Fair, May 23, 2019.

Matt Stoller, How Monopolies Broke the Federal Reserve. Matt Stoller, Aug 13, 2019.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Matt Stoller: Obama’s “Catastrophic Response” to Financial Crisis. Rising | The Hill, Nov 8, 2019. interviews Matt Stoller, Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. Amazon book, Oct 2019., see also Matt Stoller, How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul. The Atlantic, Oct 24, 2016. “In the 1970s, a new wave of post-Watergate liberals stopped fighting monopoly power. The result is an increasingly dangerous political system.” Concentrated wealth in America produces political swings between culturally elitist signalling on race without actual change for working class people, authoritarian populism in reaction, and economic populism.

David Doel, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes Passionately Demolishes Private Equity Firms. The Rational National, Nov 20, 2019. private equity firms leverage debt, buy companies, strip them of assets and jobs, and sell at a profit; this is the result of vertically integrated monopoly power.

PBS News Hour, Amazon Doesn’t Report Its Warehouse Injury Rates -- But We Have an Inside Look.  PBS News Hour, Nov 27, 2019.  

Franklin Foer, Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan. The Atlantic, Nov 2019.

Saagar Enjeti, Corporatism Is An American, Bipartisan Scourge. The American Conservative, Dec 26, 2019. “Matt Stoller's Goliath recalls when workers' rights became 'consumer advocacy,' and we all lost the language of anti-monopoly.” Jonathan Tepper, Sorry, Government Antitrust ‘Enforcers’ Are Gaslighting You. The American Conservative, Dec 30, 2019. “After a year of big talk about busting up Big Tech, it turns out these conflicted bureaucrats are going to bat for the monopolists.”

Jonathan Tepper, How To Truly Take Down The Monopoly Man. The American Conservative, Jan 23, 2020. “On these pages we've tackled economic concentration in tech, pharma, beer, and more. So what's being done about it?”

David McCabe, She Wants to Break Up Big Everything. New York Times, Feb 11, 2020. “Trustbusting advocates like Sarah Miller, who target corporate power, have finally found themselves at the center of the political conversation.”

Sam Biddle, Paulo Victor Ribeiro, and Tatiana Dias, Invisible Censorship The Intercept, Mar 16, 2020. “the Chinese video-sharing app with hundreds of millions of users around the world, instructed moderators to suppress posts created by users deemed too ugly, poor, or disabled for the platform, according to internal documents obtained by The Intercept.”

Jeff Horwitz, Facebook Accused in Amended Lawsuit of Knowing Ad Audiences Were Inflated. Wall Street Journal, Mar 20, 2020. “Social-media giant says estimates weren’t guarantees, didn’t harm customers; court filing includes employee worrying about possible lawsuit in email” Shows the power of Facebook’s monopsony.

Jeremy Lott, A Sober Look At The Dangers Of Craft Beer Consolidation. The American Conservative, Mar 23, 2020. “Small breweries are being squeezed up by conglomerate power. But are giants like InBev about to get their comeuppance?”

Gracy Olstead, Our Monoculture Food Supply Is A Potential Coronavirus Calamity. The American Conservative, Mar 25, 2020. “The highly consolidated system is fragile, and this is where local farming can step in.”

Alan Tonelson, Not Just China: U.S. Reliance On Foreign Medical Supplies Is Staggering. The American Conservative, Mar 27, 2020. and Gene Callahan and Joe Norman, Why Didn’t We Test Our Trade’s ‘Antifragility’ Before COVID-19?. The American Conservative, Mar 28, 2020.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Leaked Amazon Emails Reveal Smear Campaign Against Fired Warehouse Worker. Rising | The Hill, Apr 3, 2020. and Tucker Carlson Blasts Companies Putting Profits Over Americans in Time of Crisis. Rising | The Hill, Apr 3, 2020.

Heather Long, Small Business Used to Define America’s Economy. The Pandemic Could Change That Forever.. Washington Post, May 12, 2020. “More than 100,000 small businesses have closed forever as the nation’s pandemic toll escalates”

Hasan Minhaj, The News Industry Is Being Destroyed. Patriot Act | Netflix, Jun 8, 2020. how private equity firms are destroying local newspaper and good journalism

David Dayen, Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power. Amazon page, Jul 2020. and interview by Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, How Monopolies like Amazon Are Ruining Everything. Rising | The Hill, Jun 20, 2020.

Nicole Lyn Pierce, 55% of Businesses Closed on Yelp Have Shut Down for Good During the Coronavirus Pandemic. MarketWatch, Jul 22, 2020. Also: “Black-owned businesses have been more devastated by the pandemic than any other demographic group, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The number of Black small business owners plummeted from 1.1 million in February to 640,000 in April, or a 41% drop.”

Matt Stoller, Pat Garofalo, and Olivia Webb, Understanding Amazon: Making the 21st-Century Gatekeeper Safe for Democracy. American Economic Liberties Project, Jul 24, 2020.

Zephyr Teachout, Break 'Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money. Amazon book, July 2020.. See review by Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, Monopolies Make Their Own Rules. New Republic, Jul 7, 2020. “Zephyr Teachout’s new book lays bare the private legal system that shores up their immense power—and hides it from public view.”

Matt Stoller, Congress Forced Silicon Valley to Answer for Its Misdeeds. The Guardian UK, Jul 30, 2020. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google. See also Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Matt Stoller: Breaking Down The Many Lies Big Tech CEOs Told Congress. Rising | The Hill, Jul 30, 2020..

Willis L. Krumholz, How To Keep Corporate Wokeness From Destroying America. The Federalist Society, Jul 31, 2020. “The Democratic Party long ago abandoned working-class blacks and whites in favor of identity politics, corporatism, and cultural leftism. It's time for the GOP to step up by returning to its roots.” Lincoln-era Republican progressive vision.

Thomm Hartman, The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream. Amazon book, Aug 25, 2020.. See interview by John Iadarola, How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream . The Damage Report, Aug 29, 2020.

Sandeep Vaheesan, How Antitrust Perpetuates Structural Racism. The Appeal, Sep 16, 2020. highlights sports, fast food franchising, shepherding livestock, farming, the gig economy.

Bhaskar Chakravorti, Make Surveillance Capitalists Pay Their Dues. Foreign Policy, Sep 24, 2020. “Congressional action has typically left big tech firms intact, instead mandating that they improve access for all consumers. Washington should stick to that model.” He proposes that they make their services universal, and to some extent their technology transparent.

Matt Stoller, Cheerleading, Monopolies and Sexual Predators. Matt Stoller Substack, Sep 27, 2020. “Why Bain Capital's Varsity Brands failed to stop a child sex scandal in cheerleading.”

Rana Faroohar, Concentrated Power in Big Tech Harms the US. The Business Times, Sep 30, 2020.

Andrew Yang, Saagar Enjeti: What Are Conservatives Conserving? . Yang Speaks, Oct 1, 2020. covers monopolistic tendencies about major media companies, the possibilities of progressive new media. Yang argues that local media cannot be sustained unless people have UBI and discretionary income.

Sridhar Natarajan, Goldman Warns of More Job Losses With Jumbo Mergers on the Rise. Bloomberg, Oct 16, 2020.

Ryan Grim, Want to Know About Google’s Anti-Competitive Behavior? Just Ask Yelp. The Intercept, Oct 20, 2020.. See also Mike Isaac, Steve Lohr, Jack Nicas, and Daisuke Wakabayashi, 12 Accusations in the Damning House Report on Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. NY Times, Oct 20, 2020. “Lawmakers said they found multiple problems with each of the four giant tech companies.”

Peter Eavis, While Millions Lost Jobs, Some Executives Made Millions in Company Stock. NY Times, Oct 8, 2020.

Chuck Collins, Omar Ocampo, and Sophia Paslaski, Billionaire Bonanza 2020: Wealth Windfalls, Tumbling Taxes, and Pandemic Profiteers. Institute for Policy Studies, Nov 2020. summarized by Yawu Miller, Billionaires Profit, Workers Struggle. Bay State Banner, Nov 25, 2020.

SciShow, Why It Actually Took 50 Years to Make COVID mRNA Vaccines.  SciShow, Feb 3, 2021.  Hank Greene gives a brief, understandable history of the scientific building blocks of the mRNA vaccine technology.

Matt Stoller, The Pentagon Turns on Wall Street. Matt Stoller Substack, Feb 10, 2021. “The defense industrial base is collapsing. Blame monopolies and Wall Street, writes the DOD. Meanwhile, the Pentagon's Deputy Secretary expresses concern over "extreme consolidation."“

Matt Stoller, It’s Time to End Facebook’s Ongoing Crime Spree. American Economic Liberties Project, Feb 18, 2021. “Documents unsealed in a Northern California district court show that top Facebook executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, knowingly falsified advertising-reach statistics to generate revenue by defrauding advertising customers. Facebook told advertisers that its ads reach many more people than they actually do. These falsified metrics were then used to win advertising sales and induce more spending on its platform.”

Leah Nylen, Apple, Google App Store Fights Move to the States . CNN, Mar 3, 2021. “State legislators are pushing bills that would offer app developers like Spotify, Epic Games and Match Group a reprieve from the two tech giants' fees.”

Matt Stoller, Apple Threatens North Dakota, Suffers Crushing Loss in Arizona: "A Lot of It is Just Fear" . Big Substack, Mar 3, 2021. “Facebook, Apple, Google do not obey the law. Lawmakers know it.”

Alec MacGillis, Amazon and the Breaking of Baltimore. NY Times, Mar 9, 2021. explores how corporate monopolistic consolidation also concentrates work in some places and not in others, leading to housing price increases and urban collapse

Lynn Parramore, Chicago School Economists Got it Wrong. Strong Antitrust Policy Boosts the Economy.. Institute for New Economic Thinking, Mar 29, 2021. Interview with Mark Glick, exploring history starting from the Sherman Act, Woodrow Wilson’s Progressivism, FDR’s New Deal, the rise of the Chicago School and Pareto efficiency, and the response from the New Brandeisian legal scholars.

Sean Hollister, Apple’s $64 Billion-a-Year App Store Isn’t Catching the Most Egregious Scams. The Verge, Apr 21, 2021. See also Kosta Eleftheriou, Twitter . Apr 21, 2021.

Matt Stoller, One Benefit of Biden's Capital Gains Tax Hike: Fewer Mergers. Matt Stoller Substack, Apr 28, 2021. “Joe Biden's tax changes would slow the merger boom, if it passes. And it would hit private equity particularly hard.”

Chris Pomorski, The Death of Hahnemann Hospital. The New Yorker, May 31, 2021. “When a private-equity firm bought a Philadelphia institution, the most vulnerable patients bore the cost.”  “Hahnemann and another medical center, St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, had been acquired, for a hundred and seventy million dollars, by American Academic Health System, a company controlled by the California private-equity firm Paladin Healthcare Capital.”  CEO Joel Freedman later closed the Hospital, which served lower-income Black and Hispanic residents of North Philadelphia, PA.   “For-profit hospitals arrived in Pennsylvania in 1998. Tenet Healthcare, based in Dallas, owned a hundred and twenty hospitals in eighteen states, and that November the company bought Hahnemann out of bankruptcy, along with St. Christopher’s and six other area hospitals. “We promise we will be here for the long haul,” Michael Focht, Tenet’s C.O.O., said at a ceremony held at Hahnemann. “This is not a short-term visit.”  Eight years later, Tenet agreed to pay nearly nine hundred million dollars in fines to the Justice Department for excessive Medicare billing, distributing kickbacks to doctors, and exaggerating the severity of diagnoses in order to inflate charges.”

David Doel, Katie Porter Exposes Big Pharma CEO's Greedy Lies To His Face. The Rational National, May 18, 2021. Abbott Labs/AbbVie raised the price of Humira by 13x because there are no price controls in the U.S. The federal government does not negotiate drug prices with big pharma. See The Hill, Katie Porter Presses Pharma CEO on Increased US Prices of Two Drugs. The Hill, May 18, 2021. for full video of Katie Porter. D-CA. grilling CEO Gonzales.

Sam Haselby and Matt Stoller, It’s Time to Break Up the Ivy League Cartel. Chronicle of Higher Education, May 28, 2021. “Democracy requires something more than a handful of super-rich universities.”

Matt Stoller, Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech? Matt Stoller Substack, Jun 25, 2021. “The Judiciary Committee voted 21-20 to split up Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. What happened was unbelievable.” Lina Khan’s leadership at the FTC is palpable.

Ryan Grim, FTC Chair Triggers WSJ, Sends Wall Street Into a Panic Over Made In USA Ruling. Rising | The Hill, Jul 7, 2021. also compares this moment to the 2011 tug of war over the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Gregory Jaczko. See also Tim De Chant, Amazon Doesn’t Like FTC Chair Lina Khan’s Views, Wants Her Off Investigations. ARS Technica, Jun 30, 2021. “Sensing a changing antitrust landscape, Amazon fires a warning shot.” See also Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Amazon Tries to Block Anti-Trust Suit. Rising | The Hill, Jul 5, 2021. points out that Thomas Barnett wrote the recusal request; and Barnett ran antitrust for the GW Bush administration and now works for Amazon.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Amazon Execs Admit Workers Treated As Collateral Damage On Bezos's Last Day. Rising | The Hill, Jul 6, 2021. automated firing

Nina Lakhimi, ‘They Rake in Profits - Everyone Else Suffers’: US Workers Lose Out as Big Chicken Gets Bigger. The Guardian, Aug 11, 2021. “Tyson accounts for the single largest share of chicken plants across the US, processing 2.3 billion birds in 2020. The company supplies burgers and nuggets, among other chicken products, to chains including Walmart, McDonalds, KFC and Taco Bell, as well as schools and prisons… Tyson and the other three top firms control about 87% of poultry production in the state [of Arkansas]. Economists and food justice advocates largely agree that consumers, farmers, workers, small companies and the planet lose out if the top four firms control 40% or more of any market.” Includes very important state-level data. See also Associated Press, Tyson Foods Workers Get Paid Sick Leave as Union Backs Vaccine Mandate. New York Post, Sep 3, 2021. and Associated Press, Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms to Pay $35 Million to Settle Lawsuit with Chicken Farmers. Alabama.com, Sep 3, 2021.. Note also Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Tyson Food Managers Bet Money On How Many Workers Would Get COVID. Rising | The Hill, Dec 22, 2020..

Ryan Grim, Damning New Email Puts Joe Manchin’s Daughter At Center Of EpiPen Price-Fixing Scheme. Rising | The Hill, Sep 7, 2021.

David Sirota, White House Refuses to Share Vax Recipe Globally Despite Biden Support, Legal Power. Rising | The Hill, Sep 10, 2021.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Media Silent as Steven Donziger Jailed in Chevron Corporate Prosecution. Breaking Points, Oct 4, 2021. explains how Big Oil has corrupted this judge’s decision, as Chevron gets revenge on attorney Steven Donziger for successfully defending indigenous rights. See also Ryan Grim, Marianne Williamson: Steve Donziger Maximum Sentence Is Human Rights Abuse, Attack On Big Oil Opposition. Rising | The Hill, Oct 4, 2021.

Asianometry, What Eating the Rich Did For Japan. Asianometry, Oct 10, 2021. discusses the wealthiest families’ monopolistic control over corporations, politics, and natural resources; the Japanese government taxed these families and grew the Japanese economy

Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: Explaining to Slavoj Zizek Why I Think Capitalism Has Evolved Into Something Worse. Yanis Varoufakis, Nov 1, 2021. central banks have kept capitalism alive through easy money policies. Central bank money has replaced profit as the driver of the economy. In capitalism, exploitation takes place in markets; in feudalism, it is just expropriation. Also, the Amazon platform, like other platforms, is not a market, but a fiefdom.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Corporations Openly Bilking Shoppers With Inflation Cover. Breaking Points, Nov 18, 2021. spotlights Walmart, Colgate-Palmolive, Kroeger to post the largest earnings ever

Ryan Grim and Robby Soave, Matt Stoller: Clinton-Era Deregulation, Consolidation Is Responsible For The Supply Chain Crisis. Rising | The Hill, Nov 19, 2021. coordination of loading and unloading at docks is in principle open to variability and uncertainty

Michael Balsamo, US Sues to Halt Sugar Merger, Says It Would Harm Competition. ABC News, Nov 23, 2021. “It comes about eight months after U.S. Sugar announced it reached an agreement to acquire the Imperial Sugar Company, one of the largest sugar refiners in the nation.”

Reuters, U.S. President Biden Calls for Intellectual Property Protection Waivers After Omicron Discovery. Reuters, Nov 26, 2021.

Sheelah Kolhatkar, Lina Khan’s Battle to Rein in Big Tech. The New Yorker, Dec 1, 2021. “As monopolies and other large companies gain increasing control of our daily lives, Khan is Joe Biden’s pick to do something about it.” A very readable story.

Jonathan Chait, Socialize College Sports. New York Magazine, Dec 1, 2021. “Universities need to take their athletics back from the free market.”

Andrea Shalal, Meat Packers' Profit Margins Jumped 300% During Pandemic - White House Economics Team. Reuters, Dec 10, 2021.

Ryan Grim, Ken Klippenstein: Kellogg’s Ruthless Attempts To Squash Strike Fall Short, Redditors Spam Job Portal. Rising | The Hill, Dec 13, 2021. examines Kellogg’s illegal attempt at strikebreaking

David Doel, Amazon Warehouse Collapses On Workers In Tornado. The Rational National, Dec 13, 2021. because Amazon failed to comply with building codes designed to protect workers in a secure part of the facility during a tornado

Krystal Ball, Amazon Held Workers Hostage As Tornado Rampaged. Breaking Points, Dec 16, 2021.

Molly Osberg, Amazon’s Worker Burnout Makes Disaster Preparation Impossible. The New Republic, December 16, 2021. says worker churn makes worker training impossible to maintain, as Amazon even lost track of who was an employee vs. contractor.

Robby Soave, Amazon Lobbyists Helped Block Worker Protection Legislation Ahead Of Fatal Tornado Disaster. Rising | The Hill, Dec 17, 2021.

Second Thought, How Moderates Serve the Right. Second Thought, Dec 17, 2021. Explains how the terms “left” and “right” originate from the French Revolution as generally egalitarian vs. traditional hierarchy. Critiques the Biden administration for continuing aspects of Trump’s immigration policy under Title 42. Demonstrates how “moderate” in the overall US population means very high support for key provisions of the Build Back Better bill, but “moderate” among political leadership skews to the right of that. Largely because of the outsized influence of corporations and corporate donors on politicians. See Mehdi Hasan, Mehdi Challenges Joe Lieberman On Centrism, Manchin, and Iraq. The Mehdi Hasan Show | MSNBC, Oct 27, 2021.

Sway, Why Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen Thinks She'll Outlast Mark Zuckerberg. New York Times, Dec 20, 2021.

Molly Redden, Private Equity Is Gobbling Up Hospice Chains And Getting Involved In The Business Of Dying. Huffington Post, Dec 21, 2021. “Today, private equity firms are acquiring American hospices at an astonishing rate. From 2012 to 2019, the number of hospices owned by private equity companies tripled. The pace of acquisitions seems to have only gotten faster during the COVID-19 pandemic. Industry brokers who have never before put together a deal involving private equity say they now field calls from private equity buyers multiple times a week. Tempted by a wave of retiring baby boomers, the-sky’s-the-limit Medicare payments, the mom-and-pop nature of the industry and a lack of regulation that is pretty startling even by U.S. standards, private equity now accounts for three out of every five new hospice acquisitions.” Examined Traditions Health, which is owned by Dorilton Capital, whose owners are unknown. “From 2000 to 2012, the share of for-profit hospices doubled, to 60%. Then, about a decade ago, private equity began to get more and more interested in the health care sector. It has recently come to dominate fields including dermatology and dentistry and impose steep profit demands, practitioners say, at the expense of patient care. From 2011 to 2019, private equity ownership of hospices tripled. By 2019, there were more than 300 private-equity-owned hospices providing care to more than 112,000 Medicare recipients, according to Tyler Braun, a health policy researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College. That is a modest share of the total number of Medicare hospice patients — 1.46 million in 2019 — but it still works out to a soaring increase in the number of people spending their final days in the care of private equity: a 328% jump since 2012.”

Ben Burgis, The Equality That Socialists Care About Most Is Equality of Power.  Jacobin Magazine, Dec 23, 2021.  The principle is extending democracy into the workplace, over against the hierarchical organizational structure of most capitalist firms.

Joseph Brown, The Problem with Intellectual Property.  Heresy Financial, Dec 28, 2021.  Misses the significance of intellectual labor, but otherwise raises very good reasons to reform patent law.  A good reason to shorten the time of patent protection.  

Ryan Grim, Today's Capital Strike and Labor Shortage Reveal The Audacity Of Big Business. Rising | The Hill, Dec 29, 2021. Grim has an excellent graphic, comparing monthly inflation to corporate profits, and seeing the strong positive correlation. Meanwhile, labor strikes continue, showing worker burnout and discontent with wages. “Corporations could have chosen to raise wages, or keep prices lower, or make other investments, and still maintained the same amount of profit. But they didn’t. Why? The first and most obvious reason is because they could.” “What we really want to find are companies with pricing power, said Giorgio Caputo, senior portfolio manager at J.O. Hambro Capital Management. In an inflationary environment, that’s the gift that keeps on giving because companies can pass along their pricing on the way up, and don’t necessarily need to give it back on the way down.” But companies with pricing power have monopoly power, meaning they can name their price. Workers, by staying out of the job market, have increased their ability to demand higher wages, and once wages go up, they often stay up. By resisting wage increases, these companies are willing to take a labor shortage hit now, for the long run benefit of keeping wages lower than they would be. Capital always knows it’s in a struggle with labor, even if labor sometimes thinks there’s a partnership happening.”

Matt Stoller, Corporate Profits Drive 60% of Inflation Increases.  Substack, Dec 29, 2021.  Higher prices aren't just a result of supply chain chaos or government spending. Inflation is being driven by the pricing power and higher profits of corporations, costing $2,126 per American.  See Krystal Ball, Exposed: 60% Of Inflation Caused By Corporate Greed.  Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar, Jan 3, 2022.  Larry Sommers denies any influence.  Matt Stoller estimated 60%.  Plus, corporate leaders confess that they raise prices under the cover of “inflation.”  

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Bipartisan Push to Punish Meatpackers Jacking Up Prices.  Breaking Points, Jan 4, 2022.  Shows a helpful graph of the cost of cattle, which has stayed stable, and the cost of processed meat, which has grossly increased.

Thom Hartmann, Biden's Beef with the Meat Industry Monopolies (w/ Richard Wolff).  Thom Hartmann Program, Jan 5, 2022.  

Kim Iversen, Power, Money & Fraud. How The Elizabeth Holmes Theranos Saga Exposed Big Medicine Greed. Rising | The Hill, Jan 5, 2022.  

Nick Romeo, Can Companies Force Themselves to Do Good?  New Yorker, Jan 10, 2022.  “A new kind of corporate structure, the perpetual-purpose trust, can make the values of pro-social companies permanent.”  “In 2018, while researching succession options, Emery read about an organization called Purpose Foundation. It had originally launched in Germany, in 2015; in 2017, two young Americans opened a branch in Berkeley, California. Its ambitious goal is to dethrone shareholder primacy and profit maximization as defining features of capitalism. To do this, Purpose Foundation has created a new kind of corporate ownership structure. It’s a kind of legal hack, based on rules in an obscure corner of trust law. Normally, trusts have human beneficiaries. But it’s also possible to create what’s known as a perpetual-purpose trust—a trust that exists not for the benefit of particular individuals but to fulfill some purpose. In the past few years, the Purpose Foundation team has helped more than a dozen retiring business owners transfer their ownership shares to perpetual-purpose trusts. The trusts become the legal owners of these businesses, and the business owners now have a fiduciary duty to fulfill its purposes, which might include sharing profits with workers, protecting the environment, and hiring the formerly incarcerated. Perpetual trusts last indefinitely, preventing future owners from discarding pro-social policies in favor of higher profits.”  Romeo provides examples:  Organically Grown Company; Firebrand Artisan Brands.

Kim Iversen, 63% Of Ill Red Lobster Employees Forced To Work While Sick. Only 12% Have Access To Paid Sick Leave.  Rising | The Hill, Jan 13, 2022.

Peter S. Goodman, Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World.  Amazon page, Jan 2022.  See interview by Amy Goodman, "Davos Man": How Billionaires Devour the World & Fuel Global Inequality, Prolonging the Pandemic.  Democracy Now, Jan 21, 2022.  Peter Goodman discusses Marc Benioff (Sales Force), Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone Capital), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), etc. and the culture of celebrating CEOs and billionaires for philanthropy. “As many of the world's wealthiest people wrap up virtual talks today at the World Economic Forum based in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam reports the incomes of 99% of the world's population dropped during the pandemic while the world's 10 richest men saw their wealth double. Meanwhile, vaccine profits have minted at least nine new billionaires at Moderna, BioNTech and China's CanSino, amassing a combined new wealth of over $19 billion.”

Lucy King and Jonah M. Kessel, We Know the Real Cause of the Crisis in Our Hospitals. It’s Greed.  New York Times, Jan 19, 2022. See also video.

Chris Hedges, America's Class War: Organized Labor Is the Best Tool to Push Back Against the Rich.  Common Dreams, Jan 19, 2022.  See interview by Julianna Forlana, Chris Hedges on State Of Class War, Real War & Race War.  ACT.TV, Jan 28, 2022.

CNBC, Why Moderna Doesn't Own Its Covid Vaccine.  CNBC, Jan 22, 2022.  This deals with public funding and its significance compared with patent law which allows for privatizing profits.

John Nichols, Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers: Accountability for Those Who Caused the Crisis.  Verso Publishers | Amazon page, Jan 2022.  Nichols examines corporate and political leaders who used the pandemic for their own financial gain.  See interview by Ariella Thornhill, Billionaires Profited From Our Death & Immiseration During COVID — John Nichols.  Jacobin Magazine, Feb 17, 2022. 

New York Times Opinion, Meet the People Getting Paid to Kill Our Planet.  New York Times, Feb 1, 2022.  Big Food companies, their environmental impact, their political lobbying power.  

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Starbucks, Big Oil Caught Making Billions Off Price Gouging.  Breaking Points, Feb 3, 2022.

Matt Stoller, Exposing the Amazon Prime Scam.  Breaking Points, Feb 6, 2022.  How can Amazon supposedly make delivery costs free?  Amazon simply raises the cost on the seller, then requires the seller to maintain the higher cost on other platforms.  This raises the cost to all consumers, everywhere.

Amanpour and Company, Mark Cuban Talks New Price-Slashing Pharma Company and NFTs.  Amanpour and Company, Feb 18, 2022.  Cuban examines the structure of delivery and argues that he cut out an expensive, inefficient middleman called the Pharmacy Benefit Managers.  But can someone else come in and cut out Cuban’s 15% over cost?

Matt Phillips, Corporate Profits Hit a New Record High in 2021.  Axios, Mar 31, 2022.  “For the full year 2021, pre-tax profits rose 25% to roughly $2.81 trillion, handily outpacing the 7% rise in consumer prices over the same stretch.”

Brain Mann, Rich Companies Are Using a Quiet Tactic to Block Lawsuits: Bankruptcy.  NPR, Apr 2, 2022.  Re: Johnson & Johnson and LTL; Purdue Pharma; Koch brothers’ company Georgia-Pacific.

PBS News Hour, Why Corporations Are Reaping Record Profits with Inflation on the Rise. PBS News Hour, Apr 12, 2022. Corporate consolidation, or monopoly power, is one major factor, because it prevents new competitors from entering the market to price goods lower.

David Doel, Starbucks Gets Desperate In Attempt To Thwart Union Effort.  The Rational National, Apr 13, 2022.

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales, Prices Soar as Corporate Profiteers & Speculators Drive Inflation; It Hurts the Developing World.  Democracy Now, Apr 13, 2022.  Food and energy insecurity and inflation will drive a famine.

Robert Reich, How to Stop Profiteering and Get Money Back in Your Pockets.  Robert Reich, Apr 14, 2022.  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse proposes a Windfall Tax Bill that taxes excess profits of oil and gas companies and gives the money back directly to the American people.  The Windfall Tax Bill shows that the idea that corporate profits should better serve the public good is philosophical and legal.

Josh Bivens, Corporate Profits Have Contributed Disproportionately to Inflation. How Should Policymakers Respond? Economic Policy Institute, Apr 21, 2022. “The price of just about everything in the U.S. economy can be broken down into the three main components of cost. These include labor costs, nonlabor inputs, and the “mark-up” of profits over the first two components. Good data on these separate cost components exist for the nonfinancial corporate (NFC) sector—those companies that produce goods and services—of the economy, which makes up roughly 75% of the entire private sector. Since the trough of the COVID-19 recession in the second quarter of 2020, overall prices in the NFC sector have risen at an annualized rate of 6.1%—a pronounced acceleration over the 1.8% price growth that characterized the pre-pandemic business cycle of 2007–2019. Strikingly, over half of this increase (53.9%) can be attributed to fatter profit margins, with labor costs contributing less than 8% of this increase. This is not normal. From 1979 to 2019, profits only contributed about 11% to price growth and labor costs over 60%, as shown in Figure A below. Nonlabor inputs—a decent indicator for supply-chain snarls—are also driving up prices more than usual in the current economic recovery.” See also commentary by Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Exposed: How Corporate Thieves Are Jacking Up Prices. Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar, Apr 30, 2022. Krystal and Saagar connect it to monopolistic price gouging.

Claire Provost and Matt Kennard, Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy. Bloomberg Academic | Amazon page, May 4, 2023. See interview by PoliticsJOE, Investigative Journalist Charts How Corporate Greed Has Destroyed Democracy | Matt Kennard Interview. PoliticsJOE, Jun 10, 2023. A one hour interview, excellent overview of the book, mostly focusing on how US and UK corporations controlled foreign policy, the IMF, the World Bank, etc. to control democratic power in the developing world.

Brianna Joy Grey, Robbie Soave, and David Sirota, NSA Awards $10B Contract to Amazon, Details Withheld for ‘National Security’.  Rising | The Hill, May 15, 2022.  Incredible for its scope and size and secrecy.

Deutsche Welle, Google, Facebook, Amazon - The Rise of the Mega-Corporations.  Deutsche Welle  Documentary, May 19, 2022.  

Julie Creswell and Madeleine Ngo, Baby Formula Shortage Has an Aggravating Factor: Few Producers.  New York Times, May 20, 2022.  “With just a handful of companies making U.S. infant formula, a shutdown of Abbott’s plant had outsized impact on the supply.”

 Second Thought, How Consulting Firms Secretly Run Entire Countries.  Second Thought, May 20, 2022.  French President Macron hired McKinsey.  The French Senate investigated how McKinsey charged France a huge sum and evaded corporate taxes in the past 10 years, despite charging 330 million Euros on French soil.  McKinsey cut programs to the poor and dumped them on charity’s lap.  This promotes the falsehood that the private sector is more efficient, and government programs cannot innovate solutions, and workers cannot be trusted to report their own interests and goals.  Consulting is a scam.

Sylvie Gilman and Thierry de Lestrade, Obesity and Corporate Greed.  Deutsche Welle, May 26, 2022.  “Doctors predict that by 2030, half of the world's population will be overweight or obese. An epidemic of obesity is causing a rapid rise in diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. It's becoming the biggest health challenge worldwide. Why has no country managed to stop this epidemic? The food industry and government authorities say it's due to a lack of individual self-discipline. Is this true? Or is it the result of collective failure -- a symptom of a liberal society that abhors obesity, yet produces people who are overweight. Is society itself to blame for this situation?”  Multinational food corporations making sugar products and refined flour products have taken over our industrial food system for four decades.  

Krystal Ball, Amazon Caught Using Minority Charities to Hide Market Rigging.  Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar, Jun 6, 2022.  “Amazon weaponizes wokeness to hide from market rigging by donating to a network of minority run groups who will call antitrust legislation racist in exchange for funding.”

John Oliver, Tech Monopolies.  Last Week Tonight, Jun 13, 2022.  Examines the anticompetitive, monopolistic power of Amazon and Google especially.

David Gelles, The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America―and How to Undo His Legacy.  Simon & Schuster | Amazon page, May 31, 2022.  Welch, CEO of GE, took a very short-term financial profit perspective, gutting manufacturing and shifting to downsize, offshore, firing 10% of the workforce every year, and turning GE into a financial company.  Two dozen of Welch’s proteges in management spread to 3M, Boeing, Chrysler, Home Depot, etc.  See interview by Walter Isaacson, New Book: Jack Welch Broke Capitalism, Ushered In an Era of Distrust.  Amanpour and Company, Jun 13, 2022.  

Eric Gardner, Why Are Diaper Prices Up 184 Percent? Two Corporations Are Preying On Parents. More Perfect Union, Jun 14, 2022.

James Li, Oil Markets Reveal Rot In American Economy.  Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar, Jun 19, 2022.  Financial engineering results in Big Oil buying back stocks and paying dividends instead of drilling new wells and expanding oil supply, which would reduce the price of oil and gas to consumers.  Meanwhile, despite inflation, Big Oil is seeing the second highest cash flow ever.

Carsten Jung and Chris Hayes, Prices and Profits After the Pandemic.  Institute for Public Policy Research, Jun 20, 2022.  “While inflation is primarily being driven by global factors, this joint IPPR and the Common Wealth report argues that surging profits by some companies could be a contributing factor to rising prices. Contrary to the arguments of the prime minister and the governor of the Bank of England that wage restraint is needed to keep inflation down, the report argues that profit restraint is also required.”

Ariela Weinberger, Prices, Profits, and Power: Corporate America and Inflation.  Roosevelt Institute, Jun 21, 2022.  “New Roosevelt Institute brief finds that corporate markups and profits are at their highest recorded level since the 1950s.”  See interview by Saagar Enjeti, Data Proves Corporate Price Gouging.  Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar, Jul 5, 2022. 

The Gravel Institute, How Oil Companies Are Scamming You.  The Gravel Institute, Jun 30, 2022.  Interviews Matt Bruenig at the People’s Policy Project, and compares the U.S. to Norway’s treatment of its oil industry.  Due to financial laws, U.S. oil companies refuse to increase supply to keep oil prices high, then buy back their own stock to increase the profits for their shareholders.

PBS Frontline, Is WalMart Good for America?  PBS Frontline, Jul 5, 2022.  A 60 minute documentary exploring WalMart’s success. At the 25 minute mark, shows the expansion of WalMart and its dependence on China to manufacture the lowest cost products.  

Robert Reich, Boeing, GM, FedEx: These Are As Complicit As the Far Right in Threatening US Democracy.  The Guardian UK, Jul 14, 2022.  “Corporations are underwriting the thuggery of Trump and his allies – all because they want to pay as little tax as possible.”

Matt Stoller, How To Fix The Airline Industry's Structural Problems.  Breaking Points, Jul 17, 2022.  Why Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttegieg really did nothing, including Air Canada not admitting wrongdoing.  The airlines are not refunding customers, either.  The monopoly consolidation, where United, American, Delta, and Southwest control 80% of the market, results in all these problems.  Airlines need to be a public-private partnership as a national resource because of the economics of the industry:  Fuel is costly at takeoff but not flight, which leads to more long flights and fewer short flights.  This is similar to postal service.  

Julia Jaki, Biopiracy: The Commercial Appropriation of Biological Resources. Deutsche Welle Documentary, Jul 26, 2022. “Rooibos tea and the sweetener stevia were originally discovered by indigenous peoples. Now they are among a long list of biological resources that bring profit to international corporations. Biopiracy, or scientific colonialism, is the term for when big companies appropriate biological resources or the traditional knowledge associated with them without compensating the relevant indigenous peoples. It chiefly involves stimulants, food crops and medicinal plants with benefits first determined by the people who originally cultivated them. Financially powerful corporations take that knowledge, and turn it into big business. The Pai Tavytera in northeastern Paraguay discovered the sweetening properties of stevia centuries ago - but have seen none of the profits now being made on the global market. While they find themselves displaced to reservations and surrounded by monoculture agribusiness and cattle farms, the wild stevia plant has almost died out. Over in South Africa, the descendants of the Khoikhoi and San face a similar fate; the country's original inhabitants were the first to cultivate rooibos, which is exclusive to the Zederberg region. Today the plant is grown on a large-scale commercial basis, and marketed worldwide, primarily as a tea product. The fight against biopiracy, however, is not just about money and patents; species preservation is another crucial issue. Indigenous peoples possess precious insights into the workings of nature, and are recognized by UNESCO and other institutions as vital conservers of biodiversity. There are international agreements that are supposed to ensure that the relevant peoples or countries receive fair compensation for access to their genetic resources. However, in practice this rarely happens. All too often, industry and governments alike lack the will and authority to guarantee compensation payments. Biopiracy has thus become rampant - especially in the biodiversity hotspots in the southern hemisphere.”

Robert Reich, Gas Companies Owe You Money -- Here’s How You Can Get It. Robert Reich, Aug 2, 2022. Reich gives a data-driven analysis of price gouging. He advocates a Windfall Profits Tax that would rebate consumers.

The Guardian, Uber Files Whistleblower Comes Forward: 'We Sold People a Lie'.  The Guardian, Jul 11, 2022.  An 11 minute video about former Uber lobbyist Mark MacGann.  MacGann leaked more than 124,000 documents that show how the US tech giant flouted laws, secretly lobbied governments and exploited violence against drivers.

James Li, Stock Buybacks Are Destroying American Economy.  Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar, Aug 27, 2022.  In the last 10 years, the top 20 companies on the S&P 500 bought back about $1.3 trillion in stock shares, with Apple leading the list by far.  Because this removes stocks from the market, it artificially boosts Earnings Per Share.  Yet companies depleted their cash prior to the COVID pandemic and then begged for cash from the government -- something individual people would be excoriated for doing.  Also, company executives were much more likely to engage in insider trading when stock buybacks happened.  Also, company executives are relying on debt to finance stock buybacks.  James Li also comments on government policies that address stock buybacks.

Katharina Pistor, The Laws of Capitalism, Episode 1:  Coding Land and Ideas.  Institute for New Economic Thinking, Oct 26, 2022.  “Prof. Pistor explains how the law selectively "codes" certain assets, endowing them with the capacity to protect and produce private wealth. She illustrates this process with the historical example of how land became legally coded as property during the enclosure movement in England. She compares it with more recent attempts to code traditional indigenous land use rights in Belize.  Prof. Pistor goes on to explain how even ideas (which are not natural property, in the traditional rivalrous sense of the term) can nonetheless be made property according to the law. The institutionalization of copyright and patent law has created an entire new class of property. How far can it go? She looks at the coding intellectual property in the medical industry, most notably recent attempts to patent human genes.”

Matt Stoller, Will We Let Billionaires LOOT Our Supermarkets? Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar, Oct 30, 2022. 

CNBC, How Corporate Greed Makes Inflation Worse.  CNBC, Nov 2, 2022.  Also examines the Inflation Reduction Act’s $739 billion investment and subsidies.  

Patrick Boyle, How They Got Rich.  Patrick Boyle, Nov 10, 2022.  Vanderbilt was a railroad monopolist. Rockefeller of Standard Oil was an oil baron who made a deal with Vanderbilt who could now ship his oil at incredibly cheap rates.  Rockefeller then began to play Carnegie and Scott against Vanderbilt for railroad transport.  Carnegie then turned from railroads to steel and bridges and skyscrapers.  Carnegie then sold his business to J.P. Morgan.  

Andrew Glover, José Mustre-del-Río and Alice von Ende-Becker, How Much Have Record Corporate Profits Contributed to Recent Inflation?  Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Jan 12, 2023. “Firms raised markups during 2021 in anticipation of future cost pressures, contributing substantially to inflation.”

Matt Stoller, How Corporate America Traps Workers With Non-Competes.  Breaking Points w/Matt Stoller, Jan 25, 2023.  Stoller discusses how Lina Khan and the FTC have banned non-compete contracts by which corporations limit what employees can do after they leave their employment.

This is History, How the East India Company Took Over An Entire Country. This is History, Jan 25, 2023. The British East India Company of the early 1600s was the most powerful company in world history. It was arguably the first multi-national firm, a joint stock company. The Dutch East India Company was formed 2 years later, rivaling it. But the EIC held trade monopolies on Indian commodities, had a private military force, and directed agricultural policies in India.

More Perfect Union, This Mega-Merger Could Create The Largest Lay-off In Grocery History.  More Perfect Union, Feb 1, 2023.  “The Kroger-Albertsons merger is a looming disaster for nearly 1 million low-wage workers. If it's approved, the companies could carry out the largest lay-off in industry history. The FTC must step in to stop the creation of a grocery empire.”  Robert Reich, Think Grocery Prices Are High Now? Just Wait.  Robert Reich, Mar 7, 2023.  “The ~$25 billion Kroger-Albertsons merger could affect grocery stores relied on by 85 million households. The company could jack up prices even higher and pay workers even less.”  

Justin King, "I Almost Ended My Life Because Of The Corrupt & Rigged Beef Industry".  The Class Room | More Perfect Union, Feb 2, 2023.  An excellent, fact-full and emotionally gripping 13 minute video.

Isabella M. Weber and Evan Warner, Sellers’ Inflation, Profits, and Conflict: Why Can Large Firms Hike Prices in an Emergency? Mass Amherst Economics Working Papers, Feb 27, 2023.

Krystal Ball, Insulin CEO Cuts Price But Here's The Catch.  Breaking Points, Mar 2, 2023.  A good summary of the industry.

This is History, The Dutch East India Company: The Richest Company In The World. This is History, Mar 12, 2023.

Robert Reich, This One Thing Would Increase Wages By $300 Billion. Robert Reich, Mar 15, 2023. Re: non-compete agreements. It reflects a type of monopoly power.

Will Daniel, ‘We May Be Looking at the End of Capitalism’: One of the World’s Oldest and Largest Investment Banks Warns ‘Greedflation’ Has Gone Too Far. Fortune, Apr 5, 2023. Monopoly power gives corporations a pricing advantage, raising prices and profiting more when fears of inflation circulate. See Kyle Kulinsky, Investment Bank Says Capitalism Is Collapsing. The Kyle Kulinski Show, Apr 18, 2023.

Emily Peck, Once a Fringe Theory, “Greedflation” Gets Its Due. Axios, May 18, 2023. Good summary of the recent scholarship and debates.

James Li, Exposing Corporate Media's Inflation Propaganda.  Breaking Points, Jun 18, 2023.  Greedflation, including verbal quotes from executives on earnings calls.

Ben Norton, Corporate Profits Were Biggest Driver of Inflation in Europe, IMF Admits.  Geopolitical Economy, Jun 26, 2023.  “Rising corporate profits have caused 45% of inflation in Europe, compared to 40% for rising import prices and just 15% for workers’ wages, according to research by IMF economists.”

Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American: July 19, 2023.  Letters from an American | Substack, Jul 20, 2023.  HCR outlines US antitrust law:  its historical origin in progressive lawmaking starting with Theodore Roosevelt; the corporate argument by Robert Bork and Ronald Reagan which reinterpreted antitrust law and let it go unenforced; and Biden’s pivot back along with examples of why corporate consolidation is harmful.

Cecilia Kang and David McCabe, Biden Administration Unveils Tougher Guidelines on Mergers.  Boston Globe, Jul 19, 2023.  

Tania Babina, Simcha Barkai, Jessica Jeffers, Ezra Karger, and Ekaterina Volkova, Antitrust Enforcement Increases Economic Activity. NBER, August 2023.

[W]e compare the economic outcomes of a non-tradable industry in states targeted by DOJ antitrust lawsuits to outcomes of the same industry in other states that were not targeted. We document that DOJ antitrust enforcement actions permanently increase employment by 5.4% and business formation by 4.1%. Using an event-study design, we find (1) a sharp increase in payroll that exceeds the increase in employment, meaning that DOJ antitrust enforcement increases average wages, (2) an economically smaller increase in sales that is statistically insignificant, and (3) a precise increase in the labor share…[T]he increase in production inputs (employment), together with a proportionally smaller increase in sales, strongly suggests that these DOJ antitrust enforcement actions increase the quantity of output and simultaneously decrease the price of output. Our results show that government antitrust enforcement leads to persistently higher levels of economic activity in targeted industries.

Noah Smith, Antitrust Appears to Work. Noahpinion, Sep 9, 2023. Smith was uncertain about this before, but now says in response to Babina et.al.:

During the 2010s I blogged a lot about market power and antitrust. Basically, the field of econ tasked with studying monopolies and monopsonies, called Industrial Organization or IO, hadn’t expressed much concern over rising market concentration across the U.S. economy. But then a bunch of macroeconomists and labor economists came along and shook up that cozy world by showing that increasing market power could explain many of the weird changes that had been happening to advanced economies and labor markets since the turn of the century. Those included slower growth, sluggish wages, higher market concentration, higher profits despite lower interest rates, and a number of others.

A vigorous multi-year debate ensued, with good points made by both sides, and much high-quality new research produced. But events sort of overtook the debate when Biden appointed tough antitrust crusader Lina Khan to head the Federal Trade Commission, and she started going after mergers and monopolies more aggressively.

Matt Stoller, Google on Trial For Illegal Monopolistic Practices | BIG Breakdowns. Breaking Points, Sep 10, 2023.

Joseph Brown, How Large Corporations are Exploiting High Interest Rates Right Now.  Heresy Financial, Sep 22, 2023.  Goliath companies have so much cash, they act like banks and lend money out at high rates.

Robert Weissman, The Corporate Sabotage of America’s Future.  Public Citizen, Sep 2023.  Free PDF book.  See interview by Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Corruption Expert: How Pharma Stole Half a Trillion From Taxpayers.  Breaking Points, Sep 26, 2023.  

Heather Cox Richardson, September 26, 2023.  Letters from an American | Substack, Sep 27, 2023.  “The suit claims that Amazon illegally overcharges third-party sellers and inflates prices… Reagan and his people advanced Bork’s position, abandoning the idea that capitalism fundamentally depends on competition. Industries consolidated, and by the time Biden took office, his people estimated the lack of competition was costing a median U.S. household as much as $5,000 a year.” 

Aaron Bastani, American Big Tech Has Enslaved Us: Aaron Bastani Meets Yanis Varoufakis.  Novara Media, Oct 8, 2023.  This has major implications for Christian ethics.  Varoufakis argues that technological and financial power has combined as "feudal techno-capitalism" around cloud capital.  For example, Tesla is a cloud company, collecting data on its drivers, and is now joining that data with Twitter's data, which is disturbing.  Varoufakis also argues that the geopolitical tension between the US and China is in large part the result of competing visions of techno-finance.

More Perfect Union, The Hidden Reason Manufacturing Jobs Have Disappeared.  More Perfect Union, Oct 10, 2023.  Under Reagan, the FTC stopped challenging mergers.  Corporate consolidation resulted, which made CEOs and shareholders more interested and able to pursue cheap labor overseas.  Trump continued this trend, despite his campaign rhetoric that politicians allowed our jobs to be shipped elsewhere.

Matt Stoller, Biden Moves To Crack Down On Junk Fees.  BIG Breakdowns | Breaking Points, Oct 15, 2023.  This is an excellent video about not just junk fees, but corporate consolidation and price fixing when software and algorithms get involved.

Peter Zeihan, England’s Rise to Greatness.  BEC Finance, Oct 31, 2023. Prior to its colonial and industrial periods, England traditionally had a weak central state, unlike Spain, which had a strong central state because of its unification process and land-based wars.  To colonize other lands, and to fund deep water navigation, the English crown had to allow merchants and nobles to form corporations like the East India Company and reap windfall profits.  British colonialism led to a unique combination of strong corporate power with military capacity and a relatively weak central government dependent on its legally chartered corporations to administer the Empire.  John Locke was the theorist who justified this arrangement.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, GM Humiliates Biden As UAW Announces Historic Organizing.  Breaking Points, Nov 30, 2023. 

Senator Bob Casey, A Special Report on Greedflation: How Corporations Are Making Record Profits on the Backs of American Families. Senator Bob Casey, Nov 2023. See summary by Julia Terruso, Potatoes, Huggies, and Toothpaste Are Rising in Price and Bob Casey Says Greedy Corporations Are to Blame. Philadelphia Inquirer | MSN, Nov 2023. See Phoenix Berman, PA Senator Bob Casey’s “Greedflation” Reports Expose Consumer Price Gouging. CBS News, Nov 16, 2023.

Poly Matters, The Strange, Broken Economics of Ireland.  Poly Matters, Dec 29, 2023.  How Apple and other companies use shell companies in Ireland and elsewhere to avoid taxes.

Tom Perkins, Half of Recent US Inflation Due to High Corporate Profits, Report Finds.  The Guardian UK, Jan 19, 2024. “Thinktank report says ‘resounding evidence’ shows companies continue to keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop.”

Bill Saporito, Boeing Made a Change to Its Corporate Culture Decades Ago. Now It’s Paying the Price.  New York Times, Jan 23, 2024. 

More Perfect Union, Legal Weed Is Being Ruined By Corporate Greed. More Perfect Union, Jan 29, 2024. Trulieve Corporation. Marijuana markets are already becoming monopolized.

Cold Fusion, Why Apple is Quietly Buying AI Companies. Cold Fusion, Jan 30, 2024.

Matt Stoller, Wall Street Panics Over Biden Monopoly Crackdown. Breaking Points, Feb 11, 2024. An overview of Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission wins in the home realty business, airlines, meat industry, Google.

Robert Reich, The Borking of America. Robert Reich, Mar 1, 2024. On Robert Bork and his influence via Reagan on antitrust enforcement, or the lack thereof.

John Oliver, Boeing. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO), Mar 7, 2024. Boeing was a well run company with a very good reputation until its merger with McDonnell-Douglas in December 1996. Boeing’s company’s culture was one of demanding transparency for safety. McDonnell-Douglas was cutthroat, accident-ridden, and focused on stock value and stock buybacks. MD’s CEO Stonecipher drastically cut R&D and outsourced component developments.

More Perfect Union, The Man Corporate America Is Most Afraid Of. More Perfect Union, Mar 6, 2024. The Department of Justice stopped Jetblue and Spirit from merging. Now they're coming for Apple, Google, and Ticketmaster. The man behind it is Jonathan Kanter — head of the DOJ's Antitrust Division.

More Perfect Union, How Boeing Learned to Make Money and Forgot How to Build Planes. More Perfect Union, Mar 13, 2024. A ten minute video segment mostly focusing on the general financialization of Boeing, with less detail than John Oliver’s segment.

Lina Khan, America Has a Resilience Problem. Foreign Affairs, Mar 20, 2024. “As in prior moments of contestation, we are starting to hear the argument that America must protect its domestic monopolies to ensure we stay ahead on the global stage. Rather than double down on promoting free and fair competition, this “national champions” argument holds that coddling our dominant firms is the path to maintaining global dominance. We should be extraordinarily skeptical of this argument and instead recognize that monopoly power in America today is a major threat to America’s national interests and global leadership. History and experience show that lumbering monopolies mired in red tape and bureaucratic inertia cannot deliver the breakthrough technological advancements that hungry start-ups tend to create. It is precisely these breakthroughs that have allowed America to harness cutting-edge technologies and have made our economy the envy of the world. To stay ahead globally, we don’t need to protect our monopolies from innovation—we need to protect innovation from our monopolies. And one of the clearest illustrations of how consolidation threatens our national interests is the risk monopolization poses to our common defense.”

Krystal Ball, Saagar Enjeti, and Matt Stoller, Apple’s Monopoly Plan: Take Over Cars, Banking. Breaking Points, Mar 25, 2024.

Jon Stewart, Lina Khan – FTC Chair on Amazon Antitrust Lawsuit & AI Oversight. The Daily Show, Apr 1, 2024.

Lucy Dean Stockton and Helen Santoro, CEOs Got Raises As They Cut Workers’ Pay. The Lever, Apr 18, 2024. “CEO pay at many of America’s largest companies is skyrocketing while those executives slash the median pay for their workers, according to new government filings. The revelation comes as congressional lawmakers consider new legislation that would raise corporate taxes on companies with a wide CEO-to-worker pay gap. A new report from the corporate research firm Equilar found that last year, executive compensation packages at some of the country’s largest companies increased by just over 11 percent.” “A version of this tax exists in Portland, Oregon. San Francisco voters also passed a CEO tax in 2020, which has since generated $137 million for the city… In 2022, a nationwide survey found that 75 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of Republicans support capping CEO pay relative to worker pay, up from 66 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans in 2016.” 

Ryan Grim and Emily Jashinsky, Corporations Freak Over FTC Non-Compete Ban. Counterpoints | Breaking Points, Apr 24, 2024.

Leeja Miller, No, You’re Not Crazy. Everything Is More Expensive. Leeja Miller, May 1, 2024. Re: monopolies and antitrust law. “Despite the fact that we have effective anti-trust laws on the books, they haven't been enforced in over 4 decades, allowing for the conglomeration of all major industries in the United States. This means that everything here is more expensive than it is in other similar countries. That's a problem. This is how anti-trust laws will save us all.”

How Money Works, Non-Competes Ruined Your Career - Now They Are Banned. How Money Works, May 13, 2024. Debunks the corporate counterarguments to the FTC ban. Cites dynamics in the medical industry.