It is by now widely acknowledged that the United States has a corporate concentration crisis. Sectors across the economy—from agriculture to airlines to online search to pharmaceuticals to telecommunications—are dominated by a handful of giant corporations, and the trend is only accelerating. Globally, 2017 saw the most mergers and acquisitions in history; as of this writing, 2018 was on pace to set new records. Think AT&T and Time Warner, CVS and Aetna, Disney and 21st Century Fox, and so on. The consequences of all this consolidation include lower wages, extortionate health care prices, and government at every level beholden to big business. It's great for corporate executives and shareholders, who are enjoying record profits—and terrible for most everyone else.
The trend derives primarily from radical policy shifts during the Reagan administration combined with the activism of conservative judges who, applying cartoonish right-wing economic hypotheses, intentionally reinterpreted antitrust laws—which were designed to limit monopolies and consolidation—in ways that favor monopolies and encourage mergers. With scores of Trump-appointed judges coming on board and Brett Kavanaugh ensconced at the Supreme Court, that phenomenon is likely to get even worse. It now looks like we may be stuck for another generation with a federal judiciary that is ideologically opposed to the government doing anything about the increasing dominance of corporate goliaths.
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