How you and I support the oligarchy.

Much of the federal government’s efforts to regulate capitalism have relied on legislation passed in 1890, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. At the height of the “Gilded Age,” when the Carnegies, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts sat atop giant monopolies, the law gave the government the right to dissolve corporate conglomerates that were acting in restraint of trade.  It empowered Justice Brandeis and Teddy Roosevelt to bust up some of the giant “trusts” like Standard Oil.

Almost a hundred years later, in 1978, a Yale professor named Robert Bork published a book titled “The Antitrust Paradox.” In it he argued that the goal of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was “consumer welfare.”  He argued that large corporate conglomerates were more efficient and therefore could provide consumers with abundant and affordable goods and services. If consumer needs were being met through efficiency, competition didn’t matter.  That interpretation was welcomed by those who were criticizing government regulation and taxation and it became part of our 44-year experiment with supply-side economics that continues today.

Now, the very efficient global economy does indeed supply us with abundant and affordable goods and services and we measure the success of our economy by the volume we produce each quarter (GDP).  And, because of Robert Bork’s influence, every major sector of our economy is now dominated by one or two corporate giants that claim immunity from anti-trust regulation.

We consumers, the engines that drive 70% of the American economy, have also powered the wealth discrepancy that plagues our country.  We are all shopaholics.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data today issued its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. The report shows total household debt increased by $93 billion (0.5%) in Q4 2024, to $18.04 trillion.

Perhaps Bork was correct.  We seem to care more about “consumer welfare” and the price of eggs than our mental, physical, and financial welfare.

We are to be pitied.  Because we pay to have huge HD billboards in our homes that cleverly convince us to buy more stuff.  And with just a couple clicks of a mouse it can be here tomorrow.  And the powerful transmitters we all have in our pockets and purses that masquerade as phones give the marketers constant and precise instructions how to influence each of us.  Me.  And you. 

As that wise little muskrat told us, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”