Conglomerates and Corporate Greed
Ever since its formation, the American economy has been centered around free markets. Yet conglomerates create this illusion of choice - one that directly tricks the consumer into believing that prices are high from inflation, product quality decreases are due to politics, and there’s no good options left. There are, in fact, good options - they’ve just been blocked out by the same old companies, who are the root cause of the anger towards the Biden Administration in terms of economic policy.
Trusts, which are groups of monopolies that cooperate together to keep wealth amongst themselves, are the inherent issue with free markets, having clogged up markets such as oil and transportation since the 1800s. But since the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, which forbade trusts from existing, which are groups of monopolies who cooperate together to keep wealth amongst themselves in markets such as oil and transportation. This setback has left the upper class scrambling to find a workaround to quickly accumulate vast amounts of wealth. And for roughly 70 years, they failed due to the economic turmoil that was the 1930s. That was until the 1960s; low interest rates and a fluctuating market resulted in investors purchasing stakes in a variety of different companies. Ever since then, these conglomerates have terrorized the markets across the board, siphoning money out of the hands of small businesses and into large merger companies.
By 2019, the US Small Business Association noted that despite American small businesses making up 99.9% of the market, their share of the market totals to an ever-shrinking 47.3%, with their GDP margins shrinking across the board by a difference of 1.1%. This shift towards corporations further takes the societal-driven market out of the hands of the people and into the billionaires who are running the show. Notably, a shift towards small employee-driven businesses would double the share of wealth of the poorest half of the US population and other racial minorities, instead of increasing profit margins for the select top. And it’s not to say that the small business approach doesn’t work. Other countries such as Portugal, Italy, Kenya, and Indonesia, all boast nearly 60% of their business value being a result of Micro, Small, and Medium businesses.
This shift towards increasing corporate power also destabilized central economies and overall weakened the economic power held by the interior of the US. For most of the acquired companies, headquarters moving to the coast resulted in the loss of power in former powerhouses like Pittsburgh that formed under Andrew Carnegie. Conversely, cities like Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago saw record growth in their average GDP. As a result, the Midwest has mostly been left in the dust, resulting in a weaker economy and quality of life for the inside portion of the US.
At first, it may appear to be negligible as the power is still among the same people, being the top of the food chain that is America's social class system. However, what this resulted in was the concentration of the power among a select few individuals. Take Bernard Arnault for example. When he was still in his early forties, he worked with two others to form Louis-Vuitton Mӧet Hennesy, or LVMH, which in 2025, has totalled to 75 different luxury brands, and a net worth of 233 billion USD. And his greed is most easily characterized by his claim that “As long as I’m not the richest man in the world, I won’t really be happy.” Similarly, mergers, which manage stocks of other companies, have reached the hundreds of billions to acquire, totalling to nearly 35 Trillion USD for companies such as Raytheon, Kraft, Warner Media, Twitter, AT&T, and 21st Century Fox. And despite not holding direct stakes and influence in the company, this consolidation of power hurts the average consumer as it prioritizes the wealthy shareholders over improvement of the good for the consumers.
With over 19 times more billionaires over the past year, disdain for mega-corporations has reached a high comparable to the 1890s that brought the crackdown on trusts. Since the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, outrage amongst the public has boiled down to complaints on both the Healthcare industry designed to be unhelpful and the gap in wealth between the common American and the rich.
Yet there's been plenty of efforts going majorly unseen by the public. The Federal Trade Commission, or the FTC, has been busy in the Supreme Court, arguing against unfair mergers that would further strangle the economy. Both the FTC and Department of Justice have increased their involvement since 2000, averaging over 30 nonpartisan legal cases per year. And as a result, it stopped mergers such as Albertsons and Kroger - which FTC Regulators theorized would result in decreased wages and worsened consumer choices. And with companies prioritizing the privatization and consolidation of companies more than ever before, there’s not much else that can be done on the legal end.
As average citizens of America, there is only so much we can do in terms of limiting corporations. In terms of legally binding corporations from strangling the free markets, there’s not much that can be done. Corporations are and will continue to grow further and further away from the working classes. The best that can be done is to keep this all in mind - and to be mindful of what you consume.
Ian Hsu contributed to this article. Published 9 February 2025, updated 25 February 2025 for clarity.
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