Dave5

We are living in the age of the monopoly. In the 1930s, the top 0.1% of US companies accounted for less than half of America’s GDP. Today, it’s 90%. And it’s accelerating, with global mergers climbing from 2,676 in 1985 to 62,000 in 2021.

Monopoly’s cheerleaders claim that these numbers vindicate them. Monopolies are so efficient that everyone wants to create them. Those efficiencies can be seen in the markups monopolies can charge, and the profits they can make. If a monopoly has a 50% markup, that’s just the “efficiency of scale.”

But what is the actual shape of this “efficiency?” How is it manifest? The report’s authors answer this with one word: power.