“Economics is losing authority in the political arena”
Discover more from BIG by Matt Stoller
“Economics is losing authority in the political arena”
The architect of deregulation - former Senator Phil Gramm - attacked BIG in the Wall Street Journal. What an honor.
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Last week, one of the key architects behind deregulation, Phil Gramm, attacked me in the Wall Street Journal, in a piece titled “The New Progressives Fight Against Consumer Welfare.” Gramm, who co-authored the article with FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson, argued that our movement is trying to undo forty years of bipartisan status quo, and that we don’t believe that economics is “a value-neutral discipline that guides sound decision-making.” Uh, yeah. To make this point, he cited this article in BIG, “What is the point of economics?” Thanks for the shout-out, Phil!
The anger from the old guard is just astonishing. Here’s Wilson, today, discussing our movement.
Meanwhile, Baron, a small but savvy lobbying shop came out with a methodology for how antitrust works today, and who matters in policy debates. Four of the top ten “Antitrust Super Influencers” are explicitly seeking to break up big firms, which is astonishing. More importantly, the power of economists is waning. The BIG piece on corporate profits and inflation was also cited in a House hearing on how to address the price hikes coursing throughout the economy.
We haven’t won, but the old ‘big is good’ consensus is dead.
“Economics is losing authority in the political arena”
Well done Matt, you seem to have irritated all the right people. They are on the backfoot imo, know that the argument is lost and now the game is just to play for time through bipartisan gridlock. Let's hope it does not work out that way.
Anti-trust could be enforced after the law has been broken, but only if it was treated punitively and resulted in the dismantling of offender's company more often than not. This is not the case, if you're going to argue that anti-trust should only be enforced after an offense, you should in the same breath mention bringing back criminal penalties and increasing the effective penalties for doing so. If you're not, you don't really believe in anti-trust and you're arguing from a fictional viewpoint.
He mentions Marxism's "World View" to try and paint anti-trust as communist. One beautiful thing about anti-trust is that it provides justice and breaks economic abuses without taking property. Investors and owners may experience fluctuations in value, but do not loose property due to anti-trust, unlike many if not most other forms of government interference in business. I believe I've seen estimates that put the height of Rockerfeller's wealth to be after the big breakup. Anti-trust breaks the power of money managers and CEO's, not the wealth of investors. It is a form of business regulation that conservatives and even a certain brand of libertarians can back.