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  1. #76
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    ergo, inequality isn't a natural side effect of capitalism. capitalism needs the not so hidden hand of government to achieve that.

    politics counts too.
    what bull . Unrestrained capitalism, eg USA, amasses so much wealth that it buys, with pocket change, the govt it needs to keep amassing wealth.

    Govt is the only countervailing power opposite capitalism. When govt is corrupted, compromised, captured by capitalists, we're all ed and un able.

  2. #77
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    I don't know that you can draw that conclusion based on what you've posted. You've presented a case that government policy can exacerbate inequality. I don't think you've shown that unfettered capitalism would not also result in the same or worse.
    I agree, but unfettered capitalism has never existed. capitalism presumes a context of legal and political stability. enforceability of contracts and a government that won't rob them blind, for starters.

  3. #78
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    if I'm correct about that, it follows that that inequality, in part, is a political artefact.

    if not, not.

    you could be right.

  4. #79
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    America’s Monopoly Problem

    How big business jammed the wheels of innovation

    In the past few decades, however, the economy has come to resemble something more like a stagnant pool. Entrepreneurship, as measured by the rate of new-business formation, has declined in each decade since the 1970s, and adults under 35 (a k a Millennials) are on track to be the least entrepreneurial generation on record.

    This decline in dynamism has coincided with the rise of extraordinarily large and profitable firms that look discomfortingly like the monopolies and oligopolies of the 19th century. American strip malls and yellow pages used to brim with new small businesses. But today, in a lot where several mom-and-pop shops might once have opened, Walmart spawns another superstore. In almost every sector of the economy—including manufacturing, construction, retail, and the entire service sector—the big companies are getting bigger.

    The share of all businesses that are new firms, meanwhile, has fallen by 50 percent since 1978. According to the Roosevelt Ins ute, a liberal think tank dedicated to advancing the ideals of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, “markets are now more concentrated and less compe ive than at any point since the Gilded Age.”

    How long does it take for her to interact with a market that isn’t nearly monopolized?

    She wakes up to browse the internet, access to which is sold through a local monopoly.

    She stocks up on food at a superstore such as Walmart, which owns a quarter of the grocery market.

    If she gets indigestion, she might go to a pharmacy, likely owned by one of three companies controlling 99 percent of that market.

    If she’s stressed and wants to relax outside the shadow of an oligopoly, she’ll have to stay away from ebooks, music, and beer; two companies control more than half of all sales in each of these markets.

    There is no escape—literally.

    She can try boarding an airplane, but four corporations control 80 percent of the seats on domestic flights.


    Politicians from both parties publicly worship the solemn dignity of entrepreneurship and small businesses. But by the numbers, America has become the land of the big and the home of the consolidated.


    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/10/americas-monopoly-problem/497549/


  5. #80
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    OTOH ...

    Public spending on R&D has positive effects


    A recent evaluation by Statistics Norway shows that

    governmental support of R&D and innovation in the private sector has positive effects. The tax incentive scheme SkatteFUNN is found to be particularly cost effective.


    "These are very interesting findings, and we are pleased that the evaluation shows that research is profitable, for society and businesses alike. A more research oriented industry is necessary to ensure value creation, compe iveness and efficient utilisation of resources. The Research Council will encourage more research-based innovation in all business sectors in the future," says Arvid Hallén, Director General of the Research Council of Norway (RCN).


    The report, "Evaluation of R&D- and innovation-supporting policies" (in Norwegian only), was published by Statistics Norway on 8 April.

    They have studied the effects of government financing policies aimed at promoting value creation and innovation.


    http://phys.org/news/2016-09-positive-effects.html




  6. #81
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    AT&T has reached a deal to buy Time Warner Inc. for $85.4 billion — a blockbuster marriage that would transform the telephone company into the nation’s largest entertainment company and a major force in Hollywood.


    The agreement, which was hammered out at breakneck speed and announced by the two companies Saturday afternoon,accelerates the wave of consolidation sweeping through the telecommunications and media industries.
    http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...nap-story.html

  7. #82
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    Telecommunications companies are becoming media companies. That explains AT&T’s agreement to buy Time Warner for $85.4 billion. But something else explains it, too.

    Media companies are becoming telecoms.


    Internet firms like Google and Facebook and Amazon and Netflix are the new media companies. They deliver enormous amounts of video online, posing a direct threat to old-school television and movie companies. But they also are becoming telecoms, threatening the likes of AT&T and Verizon.


    They finance undersea cables that link their data centers. They buy fiber optic infrastructure. Facebook builds open source telco gear, Google offers high-speed Internet service, Amazon hopes to become an Internet service provider in Europe.
    As this happens, telecoms must fight back. And this means challenging tech giants on the media front.


    The proposed AT&T/Time Warner deal combines two powerhouses. AT&T is the nation’s largest pay TV provider, the second-largest wireless provider, and the third-largest home Internet provider.
    https://www.wired.com/2016/10/att-bu...future-google/

  8. #83
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    Praxair to Buy Linde for $35 Billion in Industrial-Gas Deal


    http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/12/20/p...rial-gas-deal/

  9. #84
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    These Professors Make More Than a Thousand Bucks an Hour Peddling Mega-Mergers

    Today, "in front of the government, in many cases the most important advocate is the economist and lawyers come second," said James Denvir, an an rust lawyer at Boies, Schiller.

    Economists who specialize in an rust—affiliated with Chicago, Harvard, Princeton, the University of California, Berkeley, and other prestigious universities—reshaped their field through scholarly work showing that mergers create efficiencies of scale that benefit consumers.

    But they reap their most lucrative paydays by lending their academic authority to mergers their corporate clients propose.

    Corporate lawyers hire them from Compass Lexecon and half a dozen other firms to sway the government by do enting that a merger won't be "anti-compe ive": in other words, that it won't raise retail prices, stifle innovation, or restrict product offerings.

    Their optimistic forecasts, though, often turn out to be wrong, and the mergers they champion may be hurting the economy.

    Some of the professors earn more than top partners at major law firms. Dennis Carlton, a self-effacing economist at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business and one of Compass Lexecon's experts on the AT&T-Time Warner merger,

    charges at least $1,350 an hour. In his career, he has made about $100 million, including equity stakes and non-compete payments,

    Carlton has written reports or testified in favor of dozens of mergers, including those between AT&T-SBC Communications and Comcast-Time Warner, and three airline deals: United-Continental, Southwest-Airtran, and American-US Airways.

    American industry is more highly concentrated than at any time since the gilded age.

    Need a pharmacy? Americans have two main choices.

    A plane ticket? Four major airlines.

    They have four choices to buy cell phone service.

    Soon one company will sell more than a quarter of the quaffs of beer around the world.


    Mergers peaked last year at $2 trillion in the US The top 50 companies in a majority of American industries gained share between 1997 and 2012, and "compe ion may be decreasing in many economic sectors,"

    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...g-mega-mergers


    such sacred "free markets" and such holiest "compe ion" deliver the perfect solution to ... BigCorp and capitalists fleecing America and Americans.





  10. #85
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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  11. #86
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    5 different things people mean when they say we need to revive an rust

    An rust regulation and economic concentration are suddenly everywhere in progressive thinking about economic policy.

    1) We should be stricter with existing doctrine

    Under current an rust doctrine, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission scrutinize so-called “horizontal” mergers — mergers where the two merging companies basically do the same thing — to see if the merger will result in higher prices or reduced choices for consumers.

    2) We should be more skeptical of vertical mergers

    Under the guidelines the Justice Department has used since the early 1980s, there is a fairly strong presumption that a merger that isn’t horizontal — like AT&T’s proposed takeover of Time Warner — should be allowed.

    This often seems intuitively wrong to people who view octopus-like conglomerates who have their fingers in many related pies as especially menacing. The written guidelines on this subject haven’t been updated since 1984 and express an extremely lenient view of vertical mergers.

    3) We should emphasize harms beyond consumers

    Probably the greatest victory of the “law and economics” movement has been its success at persuading the courts, an rust regulators, and the an rust bar more broadly that the high-level goals of American an rust law can be boiled down to a narrow focus on consumer impacts.

    4) We should re-emphasize broader worries about concentration

    The classic midcentury political economy of the United States featured lot of legal restriction on firm size that had little or nothing to do with an rust law’s interest in economic concentration. Strict rules limited the number of different cities in which a given company could own a television station while also constraining joint ownership of TV stations and newspapers.

    A bank was not allowed to have branches in more than one state, and a bank that engaged in basic borrowing and lending wasn’t allowed to be part of the same company that sold insurance or did securities underwriting.

    Most of these kind of rules have either been formally repealed or else turned into dead letters by the use of regulators’ discretionary authority.

    5) We should take a harder line on “predatory pricing”

    Nobody likes to be undercut on price by a compe or. But it’s especially galling to find yourself undercut on price by a compe or that can get away with losing money thanks to its support from deep-pocketed venture capitalists.

    That’s the situation traditional taxi companies competing with Uber and traditional mattress companies competing with a new breed of online retailers find themselves in.

    And then, of course, there’s Amazon — a giant company with ultra-low profit margins that rather infamously used steep discounts to bully Diapers.com into giving up and selling itself to Amazon.

    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...-trust-revival



  12. #87
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    Because the Repugs LOVE free market compe ion, to death

    Walgreens gets regulatory nod for slimmed-down Rite Aid deal

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-r...-idUSKCN1BU1KP

  13. #88
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    John Oliver blasts corporate mergers — starting with the ‘sh*tty’ company trying to buy HBO



    https://www.rawstory.com/2017/09/joh...e+Raw+Story%29

  14. #89
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    America Has a Monopoly Problem—and It’s Huge

    The Nobel Prize winner argues that an economy dominated by large corporations has failed the many and enriched the few.

    There is a widespread sense of powerlessness, both in our economic and political life.

    We seem no longer to control our own destinies.

    If we don’t like our Internet company or our cable TV, we either have no place to turn, or the alternative is no better.

    Monopoly corporations are the primary reason that drug prices in the United States are higher than anywhere else in the world.

    Whether we like it or not, a company like Equifax can gather data about us, and then blithely take insufficient cybersecurity measures,

    exposing half the country to the risk of iden y fraud, and

    then charge us for but a partial restoration of the security that we had before a major breach.


    Chicago economists would argue—with little backing in either theory or evidence — that one shouldn’t even worry about monopoly:

    In an innovative economy, monopoly power would only be temporary, and the ensuing contest to become the monopolist maximized innovation and consumer welfare.


    Over the past four decades, economic theory and evidence has laid waste to such claims and the belief that some variant of the compe ive equilibrium model provides a good, or even adequate, description of our economy.

    But if we begin with the obvious, opposite hypothesis—that what we see in our daily life is true, that our economy is marked in industry after industry by large concentrations of market power—then we can begin to simultaneously understand much of what is going on.

    There has been an increase in the market power and concentration of a few firms in industry after industry, leading to

    an increase in prices relative to costs (in mark-ups).

    This lowers the standard of living every bit as much as it lowers workers’ wages.

    When I wrote The Price of Inequality five years ago, I attributed much of the increase in inequality to this

    redistribution from workers and ordinary savers to the owners of these oligopolies and monopolies.

    I explained the multiple sources of this increase in market power. Some of it might have been a natural result of the evolution of our economy, growth in industries with what economists call network externalities, which might lead to natural monopolies; some was the result of a shift in demand to local services, segments of the economy where local market power, based on differential information was more significant.

    But much of it was based on changing the implicit rules of the game—

    new an rust standards that made the creation, abuse, and leveraging of market power easier—

    and the failure of an rust standards to keep up with the changing evolution of the economy.

    That was why two years ago, the Roosevelt Ins ute called for Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy, and over the past two years has amplified this message, especially as it relates to market power.

    This increase in market power helps explain simultaneously the

    slowdown in productivity growth,

    the sluggishness of the economy, and

    the growth of inequality—

    in short, the poor performance of the American economy in so many dimensions.

    https://www.thenation.com/article/am...-and-its-huge/


    The oligarchy hired s to rig the economy, and the s have "serviced" and are "servicing" their johns excellently.

    America is ed and un able.



  15. #90
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    America isn't ed at all. In fact, any person born in the United States that isn't making decent/good money by the age of 35 is functionally re ed.

    Corporate mergers may provide fewer options for consumers, but larger corps also provide more stable and predictable income for workers. True monopolies should be broken, but large companies merging isn't always a bad thing. In fact, quite often it's a great thing.

  16. #91
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    America isn't ed at all. In fact, any person born in the United States that isn't making decent/good money by the age of 35 is functionally re ed.

    Corporate mergers may provide fewer options for consumers, but larger corps also provide more stable and predictable income for workers. True monopolies should be broken, but large companies merging isn't always a bad thing. In fact, quite often it's a great thing.
    goddamn, you're ing stupid

  17. #92
    Veteran SpursforSix's Avatar
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  18. #93
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    Mergers and Monopoly: How Concentration Changes the Electricity Business

    Executive Summary

    A wave of consolidation has swept across the U.S. economy over the past decade, reshaping already-powerful corporations into financial and political powerhouses. The trend has taken particular hold among electric utilities, a sector where monopoly reigns virtually unchecked.

    Consolidated, investor-owned utilities now have service territories that span several states and include millions of customers. They say gobbling compe ors delivers operational efficiencies and cost savings. But who sees the benefits? And what are the unspoken costs?

    This report explains how concentration of power in monopoly utilities delivers fewer customer benefits than alleged, and how the unmentioned costs of concentrating power in a few firms undermines protection of the public interest.

    The House Always Wins

    Despite efforts to cast consolidation as customer-friendly,

    the benefits are heavily weighted in favor of utility shareholders.

    Unequal Financial Benefits


    Most utility mergers feature large benefits for company shareholders, but much smaller benefits for customers.

    When Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear power generator, unveiled in 2014 its plan to swallow Washington, D.C.-based utility Pepco in a $6.8 billion deal, it pledged $100 million toward a fund earmarked for rate credits, low-income assistance, and energy efficiency across its multi-state territory.

    That translates to just $50 per customer, compared with the whopping $1.1 billion that the merger unlocked for Pepco shareholders.

    https://ilsr.org/electricity-mergers-and-monopoly/



  19. #94
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    Qualcomm is a tech success story that might be coming to an untimely end.

    Most everyone has heard about Broadcom
    positioning itself to buy out Qualcomm.

    I'll leave the complete financial strategy for the experts to sort through, but the gist is that Broadcom is trying to spend $70 per share (over $100 billion in total) to buy out
    Qualcomm, who wants no part of it. Many on Wall Street like the idea, as Broadcom will likely be able to play nice with Apple and Intel so stock prices rise for all three companies, and

    there is a good chance the deal could happen and not be rejected by regulators.


    There's a darker side, though, and it has to do with the abstract idea we call innovation.

    Specifically, that this

    takeover will kill the entrepreneurial spirit that Qualcomm fosters and new breakthroughs in the semiconductor space will suffer.

    Our own Daniel Bader
    goes into great detail about how this will affect the mobile space, and it is a must-read.

    https://www.androidcentral.com/broadcom-buying-qualcomm-could-grind-innovation-screeching-halt

    ===============

    Why Broadcom's $130 billion Qualcomm deal would be bad for mobile innovation

    https://www.androidcentral.com/expla...mm-acquisition

  20. #95
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    FCC Boss Demolishes Media Ownership Rules In Massive Gift To Sinclair Broadcasting

    But Pai has also been taking heat for his pursuit of another pet project:

    gutting media consolidation and ownership rules solely for the benefit of Sinclair Broadcasting, which is seeking approval for its $3.9 billion bid for Tribune.

    In the last few months, Pai has, as promised, been "taking a weed whacker" to rules intended to protect local reporting, media compe ion, and opinion diversity.

    That has included

    killing an 80 year rule intended to protect local compe ors and journalism from unchecked monopoly control of a market,

    and taking an axe to some protections but

    bringing back others solely to Sinclair's benefit:

    "On Tuesday, the FCC eliminated a requirement for broadcasters to keep a local studio.

    A day later, Pai called for easing ownership restrictions, potentially taking pressure off Sinclair’s $3.9 billion deal for Tribune Media Co.’s TV stations.

    Earlier, he had restored an obsolete rule, making the deal possible.

    On Thursday, the agency moved toward blessing a new broadcasting standard that may enrich Sinclair as it offers viewers sharper pictures."

    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...dcasting.shtml

    America is ed and un able. The anti-democratic crimes that the oligarchy / Repug kakistoracry commits will be irreversible

  21. #96
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    House Democrats seek probe of FCC chairman’s treatment of Sinclair



    Two U.S. House Democrats on Monday asked the Federal Communications Commission inspector general to probe whether FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was biased in favor of Sinclair Broadcast Group, which is seeking approval of a $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media Co.

    Representatives Frank Pallone and Elijah mings cited FCC decisions that benefited Sinclair, the largest U.S. television broadcast group, and a media report last year that the

    election campaign of President Donald Trump struck a deal with Sinclair for favorable coverage.

    “All of these actions – when taken in context with reported meetings between the Trump administration, Sinclair, and Chairman Pai’s office – have raised serious concerns about whether Chairman Pai’s actions comply with the FCC’s mandate to be independent,”

    Sinclair forces its stations to “air pro-Trump propaganda and then seeks favors from the Trump administration.”

    Any claim that Chairman Pai is modifying the rules now to benefit one particular company is completely baseless.”

    FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, told a congressional committee last month,

    “All of our media policy decisions seem to be custom-built for this one company.”

    Sinclair announced plans in May to acquire Tribune’s 42 TV stations in 33 markets as well as cable network WGN America,

    extending its reach to 72 percent of American households.

    The FCC is set to vote Thursday on Pai’s plan to eliminate the ban on cross-ownership of a newspaper and TV station in a major market and

    make it easier for media companies to buy additional TV stations in the same market.

    Approval would make it easier for Sinclair to acquire more TV stations.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/hou...t-of-sinclair/

    In San Antonio, Sinclair already owns KMYS, WOAI-TV, KABB

    No Tribune stations in SA.

  22. #97
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    6 Ways to Rein In Today’s Toxic Monopolies

    Monopolies are strangling compe ion and cutting off opportunity. Here’s how to stop them.


    https://www.thenation.com/article/six-ways-to-rein-in-todays-toxic-monopolies/

    Another aspect of corporate consolidation is when, eg, a cable company is the only such employer in an area,

    so doesn't have to compete with salary and benefits for labor with another cable company.

  23. #98
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    Andeavor (ex Tesoro) leaving San Antonio

    https://www.mysanantonio.com/busines...ium=newsletter

    How many Andeavor corporate jobs LOST from this consolidation?
    Last edited by boutons_deux; 07-24-2018 at 01:19 PM.

  24. #99
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    Comcast bids on Fox one day after merger with AT&T is ok'd:

    Comcast bids $65 billion for 21st Century Fox assets, topping Disney


    • Comcast, the parent of CNBC, offered Fox shareholders $35 a share in cash and 100 percent of the shares the company left behind after the deal.
    • The deal is a 19 percent premium to the value of Disney's offer as of noon on Wednesday.
    • The announcement comes one day after a federal judge cleared the way for AT&T's megadeal for Time Warner, a decision that is expected to unleash a wave of big mergers.



    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/13/comc...ox-assets.html

  25. #100
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    Amex wins an rust case, Justice Thomas writes the majority opinion:

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinion...-1454_5h26.pdf

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