Barry Lynn, a monopoly critic and longtime scholar at the Google-funded New America Foundation, was leaving and taking his 10-person initiative with him.
.. Lynn, who has been critical of Google, had praised European regulators for hitting the company with a $2.7 billion antitrust fine. The foundation, which has received more than $21 million from Google, removed Lynn’s comments from its website.
.. Soon after, Lynn’s new project, Citizens Against Monopoly, launched with a website that asked people to protest “Google’s unethical behavior” and pledged that “Google’s attempt to shut us down will fail.” New America’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, pushed back, warning that Lynn was starting a family feud at a moment when Democrats could not afford it.
.. “Barry’s new organization and campaign against Google is the opening salvo of one group of Democrats versus another group of Democrats in the run-up to the 2020 election,” Slaughter wrote on Medium. “I personally think the country faces far greater challenges of racism, violence, a broken political system, and geographic and partisan divisions so great that we are losing any common sense of what we stand and strive for as a country.”
.. as Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, strongly supported the president, and the FTC abandoned an antitrust case against the company. Over the years, Schmidt gave $842,900 to Democrats
.. as Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, strongly supported the president, and the FTC abandoned an antitrust case against the company. Over the years, Schmidt gave $842,900 to Democrats
.. In April, Hart Associates conducted polling, circulated among Democrats and think tanks, that found an enormous opening for antimonopoly politics.
The polling, which surveyed 1,120 voters overall and 341 from the decisive Rust Belt states, found just a slim majority saying Democrats favored “average Americans” over “large corporations and banks.”
.. “There was a growing awareness that corporate monopolies were a big problem,” explained Zephyr Teachout
.. The Democrats’ long detente with monopolies was good for fundraising, especially as more money from energy and banking companies slid toward Republicans
.. “If you take a thoughtful position and are able to justify it intellectually you won’t lose support from tech leaders,” Khanna said. “My experience has been that the community is pretty open to robust debate.”
It’s time to balance the power between workers and employers
The central issue in American politics is the economic security of the middle class and their sense of opportunity for their children. As long as a substantial majority of American adults believe that their children will not live as well as they did, our politics will remain bitter and divisive.
.. average hourly earnings last month rose by all of 3 cents — little more than a 0.1 percent bump. For the past year, they rose by only 2.5 percent. In contrast, profits of the S&P 500 are rising at a 16 percent annual rate.
.. Technology has given some employers — depending on the type of work involved — more scope for replacing American workers with foreign workers (think outsourcing) or with automation (think boarding-pass kiosks at airports) or by drawing on the gig economy (think Uber drivers). So their leverage to hold down wages has increased.
.. other factors have decreased the leverage of workers. For a variety of reasons, including reduced
- availability of mortgage credit and the loss of equity in existing homes, it is harder than it used to be to move to opportunity.
- Diminished savings in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis means many families cannot afford even a brief interruption in work. Closely related is the observation that workers as
- consumers appear more likely than years ago to have to purchase from monopolies — such as a consolidated airline sector or local health-care providers — rather than from firms engaged in fierce price competition. That means their paychecks do not go as far.
Workers seeking gigs on their own are inevitably less secure than a group collectively representing their interests. The decline in unionism is also a contributor to the pervasive sense that our political system is too often for sale to the highest bidder.
Why Airlines Can Get Away With Bad Customer Service
She passes attendants who smile only at the elite shoppers, offering them refreshments and guiding them toward the best deals.
.. Most companies couldn’t get away with triaging their customers this way. But some already do: airlines.
.. not like typical rewards systems, which simply encourage loyalty with discounts. Instead, they create elaborate hierarchies, discriminating between platinum flyers and coach passengers in nearly every step of the air-travel experience, from booking to baggage claim... Airlines can game out just how much each customer is worth, and treat them accordingly.. there’s little budget passengers can do to avoid an airline they don’t like. The big U.S. carriers have near-monopolies over air travel from many (though not all) major American airports.. That makes boycotting a major airline nearly impossible
Break Up the Liberal City
if they are innovation capitals it’s a form of innovation that generates fewer jobs than past technological advance. If they produce some intellectual ferment they have also cloistered our liberal intelligentsia and actually weakened liberalism politically by concentrating its votes.
.. Liberalism has become more smug and out-of-touch; conservatism more anti-intellectual and buffoonish. The hive-mind genius supposedly generated by concentrating all the best and the brightest has given us great apps and some fun TV shows to binge-watch, but the 2000s and 2010s haven’t exactly been the Florentine Renaissance.